Former Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales says he is surprised at the current Minister's public stance on scrapping the transformation of WASA.
Gonzales tells Tv6, Minister Barry Padarath was part of the Joint Select Committee that signed and approved the plan.
00:00When he says today and he tells the country that he never submitted or supported the recommendations of the report, when he did not discharge his duties by submitting a minority report and stating the UNC's position on the matter, I must say that he is not being forthright and he is not being truthful to the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
00:23According to Mr. Gonzalez, failure to implement the transformation plan will take WASA back to the dark days of corruption and poor service. He says the authority will not be in alignment with a modern water utility company to combat issues of climate change.
00:40The newly appointed minister, Barry Pedarath, has alleged hefty salaries were being paid to few select individuals under the PNM government. Today, Gonzalez says that is not an accurate statement.
00:53And the salaries that were being proposed and paid to these executives were approved by the CPO, not sanctioned by the minister, not sanctioned by the government, approved by the CPO.
01:04And that was used to negotiate with all of these positions that were publicly advertised, publicly advertised. In the previous arrangement, none of these positions were advertised.
01:15He notes that only the chief executive officer, who was recruited from outside of Trinidad and Tobago, was paid a salary of $100,000, while the other executives were paid salaries between $50,000 to $60,000.
01:32Gonzalez further defended the work of the public utilities ministry during his tenure, saying that service to several communities had vastly improved.
01:41We moved the level of service from 31% to 61%. We improved the level of service to 51,000 people in southwest Trinidad. We improved the level of service to 200,000 people in west Trinidad by the northwest water improvement program, the Tobago water improvement program, the southwest water improvement program.
02:06Right before I left office, we commissioned a new pipeline in Pluck Road that came into effect about a week or two weeks before the general election.
02:16According to Minister Padarath, WASA currently has a top-heavy management structure, costing over $70 million, while people in the country continue to suffer.
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