The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

THE president of the Water and Sewerage Management Union has agreed with the union representing line staff over recent promotions and is calling on the Water and Sewerage Corporation’s general manager to publicly address the matter.

During the days leading up to the general election a number of staff at WSC received promotions. Their letters were dated September 1. In another letter dated September 23 and again signed by general manager, Elwood Donaldson, the promotions were rescinded.

Following this, Dwayne Woods, president of the Bahamas Utilities Service and Allied Workers Union, accused the former chairman and the general manager of promoting those on the list in an attempt to garner votes for the outgoing Free National Movement government.

In an interview with The Tribune former Executive Chairman Adrian Gibson defended the promotions saying they were above board and deserving. The general manager refused to speak to The Tribune.

Yesterday WSMU president, Montgomery Miller reached out to The Tribune and said he is of the firm belief that the general manager is responsible for explaining the logic behind the recent promotions and not Mr Gibson.

“What stands out to me is that the general manager who is the tenured general manager from 2018 until the present is not willing to speak to the media,” he said. “I think that should raise some concerns, because at the end of the day we know that chairmen of boards are political appointees so they come and go with the changing favour of the political electorate.

“The person that one will really hold responsible is the general manager who is the chief executive of the organisation. Any of the documents that have been seen in the public domain, are not signed by Mr Gibson. They are signed by Mr Donaldson.

“The second issue is this whole concept, which is very foreign and new to the corporation, of Mr Gibson’s position to begin with: this whole idea of executive chairman. If you were to take a review, of the 1976 Water and Sewerage Corporation Act which creates and gives the authority, it says that the general manager is the person who is responsible for the day-to-day entity. This is correct and appropriate.”

Mr Miller threw speculation on the executive chairman’s authority.

“When you create an Executive Chairman, the general manager’s role becomes in question depending on the type of individual,” he continued. “If I am a very conservative and reserved person, I may submit and bow to what I perceive to be my superior.

“The chairman is defending the action, but I think we have to accept that he has to be defending politically not operationally. There are some other questions that arise. For example, when the chairman says these people who were promoted were well deserving. We are talking about between 62 to 70 persons that have been promoted multiple times during the course of that administration.

“Were they the only persons deserving? I would submit to you that if you are only promoting 62 of 400, about 15 percent of the staff, and you’re promoting these people multiple times, you have to ask yourself the question: are they the only ones who were worthy of promotion and how was this exercise conducted?

“Mr Woods’ statement, which I affirm, that from the manager’s union point of view, we have an agreement that lays out certain criteria for promotions. The criteria are the qualifications of the individual, the seniority of the individual, the performance of the individual and the recommendation of the individual which is the recommendation of their supervisor.”

The Tribune once again reached out to company executives, but was unsuccessful.

However, a WSC source confirmed the corporation’s Act does not include an “Executive Chairman”, but also warned that Mr Miller and Mr Woods’ position against the chairman and general manager is politically motivated.

“The media should be very careful of those union presidents, Woods and Miller,” the source said. “They have a political agenda regardless of who the chairman or the general manager was under the former administration. Those two would have been against them, anyway.

“. . .Now I must admit the Act does not call for an Executive Chairman per se, but under Gibson the corporation went to another level and the public can attest to it. No island was left behind, in terms of having running water and that was regardless of who represented it in Parliament.”

The WSC source said it is highly unlikely the promotion list consists only of FNM supporters and that the list would show political balance, if the political persuasion of the recipients were made known.