THE NATIONAL Water Commission said yesterday that the long announced redundancies arising from last year's KPMG Peat Marwick audit are to be implemented starting in August.
The number of workers to be affected was not announced, but plans for a programme of phased redundancies, running over 18 months and beginning next month, were disclosed by spokesmen for both the Ministry of Water and Housing and the unions.
Granville Valentine, the National Workers' Union's chief negotiating officer, and Harry Douglas, Minister of State for Water and Housing, made the disclosures following a meeting with Donald Buchanan, the minister, at the ministry yesterday.
Mr. Valentine said that although the actual number of posts involved was not yet available, the redundancies may be less widespread than previously thought.
The KPMG management audit into the company's operations - commissioned in 2001 by the NWC board to review the operations of NWC had suggested a scale-down of some 20 per cent of the more than 2,000 workers of the NWC.
"The recommendation originally was that 500-plus persons would go, but many will be absorbed back in the system," Mr. Valentine said.
Mr. Douglas said: "We have gone over the audit report and everybody is on board, everybody is on the same page. It was a long exercise, a lot of work, but we all worked together. In the end it's the NWC's customers that we hope to serve better."
- Petulia Clarke
