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Minister Robert Morgan, NWC President Mark Barnett and JCTU President Helene Davis Whyte
The Jamaica Defence Force has been mobilised to work with the National Water Commission (NWC) to restore critical supplies to facilities such as hospitals, schools and other essential services.
Protesting NWC employees have shutdown all of the entity's major systems leaving more than 500,000 customers without water.
Robert Morgan, Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, says of particular concern is the interruption in service to critical facilities. As a result, he said "an instruction has been given for the army to work with the National Water Commission to ensure that water is returned, especially to essential facilities."
Mr. Morgan noted that the Ministry of Finance, the Minister of Labour, the NWC and the unions representing the workers are locked in a meeting "to resolve the issue to stop this illegal strike".
Speaking on the Morning Agenda on Power 106, NWC President Mark Barnett explained that the difficulty in restoring service was due to valve issue.
"You'd have to go systematically through a certain aspect of the network... and it’s something that we're doing now, but the question is we don't know which one of those valves [is affected] and the only other way to find out is if you pressurize the system and that's something that we would refrain from doing because of the fear of the network rupturing," he outlined.
Court action?
The National Water Commission is not ruling out court action to get its employees to return to work.
Mr. Barnett said the company is willing to do whatever is necessary to restore normality.
In the interim, he said the entity is working on contingencies to provide water to critical services such as hospitals and police stations.
Agreement derailed
It has been disclosed that the NWC and unions representing workers at the utility company were close to reaching an agreement on Tuesday night but this was reportedly derailed by the Ministry of Finance.
Helene Davis Whyte, President of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), said Financial Secretary Darlene Morrison disagreed with aspects of the draft document.
Accusing the Ministry of Finance representative of refusing to compromise, Mrs Davis Whyte argued that "this is exactly the reason why we are where we are this morning with no agreement in place and workers continuing on industrial action."
According to Mrs Davis Whyte, the parties had agreed that the process would be guided and influenced by work already done by consultants from Ernst & Young, who are carrying out the NWC job reclassification.
However, she said the Financial Secretary was "insistent that the wording [of the draft agreement] was not something that she could agree with because she did not want to use the term reclassification."
She said the Ms Morrison maintained that "the reclassification work had already been completed by her department, and therefore, that is what would be used to do the work by Ernst & Young."
Mrs Davis Whyte said she hopes there will be a resolution on Wednesday.
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