Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!

DIANA MAHABIR-WYATT

Every business organisation, every employed person. Every customer, every consumer in TT depends for economic and for physical survival on WASA. Every hospital, every medical facility every pandemic protection measure depends on WASA. Every school and the lives of every citizen in TT depend on WASA.

This is not news. As climate change becomes the focus of international environment issues, research has turned to the effect of water on performance, industrial and human.The need for clean potable water affects every living creature: plant, animal, bird, fish, you and me.

Recent medical studies show that human brain functioning tends to be impaired when people are dehydrated. Children in the development phases are seriously affected when they do without water. Elderly people who need water often do not feel thirsty, so are thought to be senile when they are just dehydrated.

Taken together, these studies suggest that dehydration has greater detrimental effects in vulnerable populations, which will include covid19 sufferers. Recent imaging data suggest that the brains of "vulnerable populations" have fewer resources to manage the effects of dehydration. Consequently, cognitive tasks may be more demanding for brains of these vulnerable people, whose minds are falsely considered to be "slow" or senile as a result. Owing to a lack of hydration their performance is more likely to be impaired in comparison to adult healthy subjects.

But those who exercise, involve themselves in sporting activities or who work outdoors, as global warming increases in the tropics, are also affected by dehydration during their working lives. So we all need regular supplies of water.

I read the WASA report. Nothing new. Fifty years ago we knew WASA was inefficient. Underground leaks sent water down the drain that we needed to bathe, launder, clean, and cook with. Boys daily raced two-inch-long “boats” in the resultant “canals.” Children suffered regularly from diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses caused by viral and bacterial infectious diseases. And many died. Coconut water and rehydration salts or baking soda in water, if you could get them, were the available medications.

Since the pandemic, public health measures have been put in place; every shop, office, food supplier, law court and school requires frequent hand-washing and sanitisation.

Over the last weekend, every newspaper reported on WASA’s failures, our water shortages and the negative consequences on our economy.

Although the official reports all comment on the steady industrial relations deterioration in WASA since 1970, when I first read a report on the situation, political hiring of an unqualified work force, and the over-employment backed by union control have continued. Managers just back off and hand control to union demands.

Watson Duke, a very wealthy man, denies any of the managers mismanage. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He is one of the elite one per cent who hold power in this country and wants to continue to enjoy the power he has over them and. through this essential service, the entire country. Lock off water and you lock off life. As for economic power. it appears he may also enjoy the ability to tell WASA which union members’ families to give contracts to, including his own.

Earlier this week he was telling staff of the Public Services Association, not just of WASA, to take a day off “for rest and reflection” on Tuesday, which is contrary to Section 63 (b) of the Industrial Relations Act (IRA) and, if directed by the union to do so, and they did, which according to the IRA is an industrial relations offence, against the law could have led to the cancellation of recognition of the PSA for its bargaining unit in WASA. And to the automatic dismissal of all employees who took such action. (Section 63 (1) (c)).

Of course, that would immediately reduce the overstaffing in the public service without having the enormous cost of severance pay.

Taking “a covid day,” the other sneaky alternative he recommended, when you have not been exposed, is fraud. Either you are fraudulent or you are not. It depends on your moral character.

Of course, the mass walkout did not happen, although Mr Duke clearly thought that it would. That is what is called hubris.

It would appear that Mr Duke’s influence has waned. Workers, and the other trade union leaders he confidently stated would follow his lead too, are neither stupid nor willing to act against the public and their own interest in a time of pandemic.

He has made this call in the past, successfully, when no managers, no ministers, no Ministry of Labour officers were allowed to take action against him for breaking the law. And no politicians in our government had the courage then to take action against him. Not even the Prime Minister. So he had reason to believe in his own power.

It seems that the sub-committee report was right. Up until now, the union has been running WASA. It was reported to be that way 50 years ago. The local and foreign experts called in to examine and correct the situation, one from Israel and one from Japan, unless I am mistaken, all strongly recommended change at that time that would have cost a fraction of what those essential changes will cost now.

As I write, we once again have no water in the mains. reservoir on the hill above the community where I live is reported to have been malfunctioning due to a lack of a necessary valve, as has been the nearby one called the Picton Reservoir in Belmont, next door, for the last 15 years.

As Noel Wyatt told me 30 years ago: "No one who has power is going to give it up easily. Anyone who wants it is going to have to fight to get it.” Unions are going to fight to keep the power they have over this country.

Will the new position of executive chairman given to Dr Lennox Sealey make possible what previous chairmen could not do over the past 50 years?