Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er greater pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­vi­sion of wa­ter and waste­water man­age­ment as one so­lu­tion for an in­ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion in wa­ter sup­ply. The com­ment was made in light of yes­ter­day's T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle that hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees at the State-owned Wa­ter Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) may face re­trench­ment as part of the util­i­ty's re­struc­tur­ing.

The ar­ti­cle re­port­ed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George as stat­ing that the Na­tion­al Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Com­pa­ny of Ugan­da had been con­tract­ed to con­duct the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, which should lead to more ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tions. He said WASA had about 4,800 em­ploy­ees-an in­crease from 2,033 in 2000-and that it was over­staffed.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Natasha Mustapha-Scott, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), said the whole is­sue of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and its long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty needs to be ex­am­ined. Re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, she said the TTMA sup­ports any re­struc­tur­ing ini­tia­tive that would lead to an over­all bet­ter ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery of ser­vice from the pub­lic util­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Mustapha-Scott said oth­er con­cerns need at­ten­tion. She said this re­struc­tur­ing ini­tia­tive is just one of sev­er­al eval­u­a­tions un­der­tak­en at WASA. Mustapha-Scott said con­sul­tants and con­tracts were award­ed to in­ter­na­tion­al firms, with plans be­ing de­vel­oped, but with lim­it­ed im­ple­men­ta­tion or re­sults.

TTMA re­it­er­at­ed the need for fair, trans­par­ent and open pro­cure­ment sys­tem, which would min­imise po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. An­oth­er con­cern, she said, was the is­sue of over­staffing, which re­quired thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to pre­vent re­cur­rence. One mea­sure that could be im­ple­ment­ed, she sug­gest­ed, is a "pay for per­for­mance" or "per­for­mance-re­lat­ed pay" sys­tem.

T&TCham­ber: Stop the pay­back

Cather­ine Ku­mar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said the cham­ber sup­ports any ex­er­cise that would in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy in the sys­tem. How­ev­er, she said the Gov­ern­ment must be mind­ful of the so­cial ram­i­fi­ca­tions of em­ploy­ees be­ing re­trenched.

"One would have to con­sid­er that there is not much op­por­tu­ni­ty on the job mar­ket and they have to be care­ful and think about the so­cial ram­i­fi­ca­tions." She said the cham­ber does not sup­port an over­staffed or­gan­i­sa­tion in which there is no mean­ing­ful im­prove­ment or pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Ku­mar, who rec­om­mend­ed that ex­tra em­ploy­ees be ab­sorbed in oth­er val­ue-added ser­vices, said the so­lu­tion should not al­ways re­sort to re­duc­tion of staff. An­oth­er prob­lem plagu­ing the state sec­tor, Ku­mar said, was the is­sue of "pay­back" where cit­i­zens look to elect­ed min­is­ters for post-elec­tion favours.

"We can­not be us­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions for pay­back pur­pos­es. We have so­cial pro­grammes to as­sist per­sons."