They are promised effective feedback in five working days.
It is not, Dr Andre Vincent-Henry, told the audience, about ’transactions’, meaning it is not a facility for customers to complain about poor service or lack of water.
’It is about transformation, a programme in which ’confidentiality is key’, he said.
Dr Vincent-Henry who was only the day before this launch introduced in another ceremony as chairman of the re-minted National Productivity Council, is chairman of the Human Resources sub-Committee on the WASA board of commissioners.
But there is another perhaps equally important irony on the ground as WASA.
Even as the board was completing its work on the Governance Manual and the E-voice set up, it dismissed 30 employees, most of them senior managers and supervisors, in what has been portrayed as a massive show of illegitimate and dangerous activity, in breach of the authority’s procedures.
The workers claim they did nothing wrong, asking to see evidence of the behaviour which cost them their jobs.
Among the 30 is the authority’s head of security, who has said in a letter that he found no cause for action against any of the employees, since he got no reports of violence or threats of such, and he formed no impression himself that the workers broke any rules.
In a discussion on the matter last week, however, Dr Vincent-Henry and board chairman Dr Shafeek Sultan-Khan said this was simply ’the last straw’ in what they saw as a series of dereliction of duty by the security chief.
Both industrial relations experts with the double surnames have been running the operations on a day to day basis since taking over the reins 13 months ago. The workers letters of dismissal were signed by Marie Iton, general manager, Human Capital, the new name given to the HR Management portfolio at WASA.
She is reputed to have worked with Vincent-Henry in his consulting firm before going on board at WASA after the both of them took up residence there.
Among the three of them their service at WASA adds up to less than five years. The combined service of the dismissed workers totals more than 1,000 years.
Sultan-Khan expressed humility at the August 26 function in saying how grateful he had been to have been given the prerogative to have chosen some of the members of the board. Vincent-Henry had been one of them, along with five others.
This represents a ’best board’ in action the public utilities minister said just before mounting the podium for his address. In that statement he praised the courage of the members, pressing home his and the government’s point that this was a crucial variable in what was needed to turn WASA around in their view.
An old culture had to be changed, and previous commissioners appeared to lack the guts to do it.
Many of the dismissed workers were seen as laws unto themselves. Marie Iton’s letters of dismissal were dated April 30, six weeks after an incident over which there are a diametrically opposed views as to what transpired.
The workers had been led up to the authority’s fourth floor executive suites, to deliver a package of documents to Vincent-Henry on March 11. That package contained a proposal and a critique about the WASA plan to hive off part of its operations into a new Waste-water services company, under the Solid Waste Management Company of Trinidad and Tobago. The package of documents was prepared on the basis of two meetings which took place a the La Joya Auditorium in St Joseph.
As part of the WASA make-over in effect, former CEO Errol Grimes has been seconded to the Waste-Water operations, as the duo of Sultan Khan and Vincent-Henry run things. They are on the hunt for a new CEO and a deputy CEO.
Sultan Khan himself was persuaded to take on this assignment by the Prime Minister.
The previous board had been led by TCL CEO Dr Rollin Bertrand. But he was felt to have his hands too full to pay the kind of attention the Government felt was necessary at WASA.
Several of the workers now dismissed were notified in the authority’s intentions to transfer them to waste water. They had concerns. They wanted answers and assurances. Many of them, however, among the majority of the WASA monthly-paid staff who want nothing to do with the Public Services Association, the recognised bargaining body for the monthly paid staff. It is an open secret at WASA that the PSA is out of favour WASA monthly paid staff in the main.
Board, management and workers know this, but the board says now it has no choice but to treat with the PSA, and not to treat with any group of workers outside of that. A stalemate had been arrived at and the non represented workers retained the services of Robert Giuseppi as an adviser.
In his letter to Anand Ramsoondar, an investigator brought in from the outside, security chief Domingo Lamotte said one of his officers had allowed the workers onto the executive floor because he mistook Giuseppi for Sultan-Khan. Both the chairman and Vincent-Henry reacted to this with amusement.
But Lamotte’s letter of explanation also said that in ten years in his former position he had seen many similar situations, ’some of them very confrontational’ but he had ’never erred in my judgement, neither have I been accused of neglect of duty.
’I am confident,’ he said, ’that I did my duty and that the authority’s assets and its employees were secured, because on that day, there were no reports of damage to property, incidents or threats and or injury to any employee. Armed escorts were provided for executives to allay fears if any,’ the letter stated.
It didn’t wash, as was the case with the letters of explanation the investigator received from each of the workers who were eventually targeted.
Whereas some of the dismissed said they had authorised access to the executive floor by virtue of the identification cards they carried, the board’s position as expressed by Sultan-Khan and Vincent-Henry is that this is not so.
They say video footage of the incident captures a female employee with such access holding the door open for others to get in.
The day after the incident WASA issued a statement under Sultan-Khan’s signature condemning the action and blaming Giuseppi for organising and/or participating in what it said was ’an unauthorised meeting on WASA’s Head office compound’ and thereafter proceeding to the executive floor.
But in a latter of suspension prior to the dismissal, Iton had accused other workers, including Leroy Baptiste, of ’leading’ as well as participating in the meeting and the march to the fourth floor, both deemed ’unauthorised’. Baptiste is seen as one of the ring leaders in this group, having led the move to form a rival union to the PSA.
He and the others were also accused of ’grossly misconducting’ themselves on the day in question.
Baptiste was co-ordinator Maintenance Facilities at WASA, Mervyn Gibson. He had 32 years service. His alleged co-conspirator, Mervyn Gibson, was Administrator, Stock Control. He had 27 years service. Both of them occupied Range 64 at WASA, a position high up the value chain, just outside executive level.
Several of the others dismissed were listed Superintendent, Assistant Manager, Projects Manager and Management Assistant.
One of them, Gregory Cova, was Construction Services Manager and Curtin Critchlow was Deputy General Manager. Both were in Range 68.
The meeting and the procession to the executive floor on March 11 took place while employees had been given time off to attend a PSA meeting, which normally does not take place on WASA compound, because of what is widely acknowledged as worker hostility to the union leadership.
From the Board members’ perspective, however, the action on the executive flow was recorded at 1.30 p.m., when employees should have been back at their jobs.
In his letter of explanation, the dismissed security chief reported how he had been ordered by the Corporate Secretary and in-house legal counsel to effect arrests on the workers during the meeting.
His verbal reply was that ’they had not committed any crime for which they could be charged. He replied that there was the industrial law. I told him that threw law deals with matters of grievances and discipline and that management has the prerogative to take disciplinary action against the employees’, Lamotte’s letter said.
And in a further clarification he said ’there are no established procedures by which the Security Department is guided with regard to unauthorised meetings on the Authority’s premises.
Decisions are made by Executive management who decides what action is to be taken and instructs the Head of Security accordingly.
He said such instructions should have been from the Manager, Security Services.
’Surprisingly I did not receive any instructions from him that day, since he is in liaison between Executive management and me.
In the intervening period since then, the Estate Police Association has begun negotiating a termination package for Lamotte and nine of the ten dismissed workers who are PSA members have been rehired, while questions remain over the terms of that arrangement.
-Continued tomorrow
