Caption: Barry Padarath

• Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath says WASA hires made between April and December 2025 were mostly short-term contract positions intended to fill critical staffing gaps and support new projects.
• Opposition Chief Whip Marvin Gonzales claims WASA hired 420 people in that period at an estimated $70 million annual salary cost, and alleges some applicants paid $5,000–$10,000 for jobs.
• Padarath rejects Gonzales’ claims as misleading and says any evidence of pay-for-jobs should be reported to the relevant authorities.

By Alicia Chamely

PUBLIC Utilities Minister Barry Padarath says employees hired by the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) between April and December 2025 were employed on short-term contracts in critical areas that he claims were neglected by the former administration.

Padarath also said that if Opposition Chief Whip Marvin Gonzales has information that people paid between $5,000 and $10,000 for their jobs, he should report it to the relevant authorities.

At an Opposition press conference on Thursday, Gonzales said that between April and December 2025, WASA hired 420 people, costing ratepayers approximately $70 million annually in salaries. Gonzales claimed the Government had said it would save WASA $30 million by scrapping the previous administration’s Transformation Plan, but was now driving up expenditure through increased salary payments.

Gonzales further alleged he had received information that some employees had to pay for their jobs.

In a WhatsApp response to AZP News on Thursday evening, Padarath dismissed what he described as Gonzales’ “alarmist” claims, saying the information had been placed before Parliament and that most of the hires were on short-term employment contracts.

“The expenditure that former minister Gonzales speaks about in terms of the increase of the wage bill at WASA on an annual basis is nothing but a total and blatant lie,” Padarath said.

He added: “What has happened is that we engaged in short-term employment over the last couple of months to address challenges arising from promotions and new projects coming on stream. We needed to facilitate those, and therefore we brought on short-term contract employees, usually for about three to six months.”

Padarath said Gonzales, the MP for Lopinot/Arouca, should be familiar with WASA’s staffing situation.

“Had the honourable member for Lopinot/Arouca attended WASA and the Ministry of Public Utilities a bit more regularly during his 10 years as minister, he would know that from 2015 to 2025 there were a number of vacancies in the organisation,” he said.

He said the ministry’s approach has been to fill vacancies by promoting from within and recruiting externally, which in turn created openings at lower levels.

“When I became Minister of Public Utilities, we decided to ensure we looked from within the organisation and from without to promote persons into positions that were vacant, which then left lower-level positions open. A number of the people hired at WASA have been employed on a short-term basis,” Padarath said.

Padarath claimed the former administration paid “very little or no attention” to human resources, while focusing on filling executive positions with “hefty salaries.”

He said the former administration funded a 35-member executive team—since reduced to seven or eight—by cutting spending in other areas.

“To cover the salaries of that executive team, critical areas such as materials, supplies, outsourcing and contract labour were slashed by $300 million to $400 million, seriously impacting the operations of the company,” he said.

Padarath added: “Instead of addressing the human resources crisis in middle management and lower levels at WASA, they allowed those things to languish.”

Responding to Gonzales’ allegation that some people paid between $5,000 and $10,000 for jobs, Padarath said Gonzales should take the matter to authorities.

“The former minister should know very well that if he has allegations, he knows where to take those allegations—to the appropriate authorities,” Padarath said.

He added: “To put these blatant lies and malign people’s character in the public space is nothing new to the PNM and is nothing new to the former ministers themselves, and that is why they sit in opposition today.”