Shal­iza Has­sanali

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will no longer fall un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. The wa­ter com­pa­ny has been put in­to the hands of new­ly-ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, Gan­ga Singh, to man­age. This means that the work­load at the Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­istry, now head­ed by Nizam Baksh, has been re­duced.

Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of his po­si­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Fri­day, Singh con­firmed that both WASA and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty will be un­der his min­istry's ju­ris­dic­tion. He will al­so be in charge of Cepep, the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment pro­gramme, which was pre­vi­ous­ly un­der Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal.

"We will look at the sched­ule the Prime Min­is­ter has al­lo­cat­ed," Singh said. He said he felt that there was need for T&T to deal with the link­age be­tween wa­ter catch­ment and wa­ter­sheds.

Ram­cha­ran tipped to re­place Singh

A source at WASA con­firmed that Singh's take-home salary as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter will be far less than what he was paid as WASA's CEO. Ram­c­hand Ram­cha­ran, di­rec­tor of pro­grammes and change man­age­ment at WASA, is tipped to re­place Singh. Ram­cha­ran has held many se­nior and ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment po­si­tions at WASA.