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Barry O’Farrell; Ripping the Guts out of Sydney Water

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Published on Monday, 19 December, 2011

Barry O’Farrell is forcing Sydney Water to pay the state Government hundreds of millions of dollars more in dividends to top up his coffers. This money is coming from increased bills to customers across Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains as well as drastic job cuts which will slash customer service levels and threaten our environment.

In implementing these job cuts that have been imposed by Barry O’Farrell, Sydney Water management have decided to hand over essential work straight to developers. ASU members in Urban Growth and Asset Information areas used to do all the maintenance and the input of plans and records of sewer and water pipes as well as other Sydney Water infrastructure. This information must be accurate if the health and safety of workers and the public is to be maintained. If the information is incorrect the wrong valve may be turned off, shutting off the water to a school or hospital or a team doing an excavation might hit a sewer pipe they didn’t know was there. Put simply, if this work is not done right, we wont know where sewer and water pipes are buried.

In the past only Sydney Water staff have been able to change the data in their system, it is that important. Now for the first time developers will have direct access into the Sydney Water system and Sydney Water will only be spot checking 5-10% of the work.

Sydney Waters solution to Barry O’Farrells demands for higher dividends is to cut staff and hand over more power to developers. Do we really want our public services to going down this path?