Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed Man­noo Bridglal as Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions, but on­ly on a short-term ba­sis.

The an­nounce­ment was made in an in­ter­nal email to staff yes­ter­day.

Bridglal is one of sev­en new ex­ec­u­tives set to as­sume du­ties from to­day (Ju­ly 1). Of the sev­en, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he is the on­ly ex­ter­nal hire; the rest are al­ready em­ployed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

WASA CEO Jee­van Joseph con­firmed the ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, telling Guardian Me­dia that Bridglal was giv­en a con­sul­tan­cy con­tract to co­or­di­nate the ac­tiv­i­ties of the di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions for a pe­ri­od of three months.

Joseph said all the di­rec­tor po­si­tions will be ad­ver­tised, and in­ter­views will be con­duct­ed be­fore any per­ma­nent ap­point­ments are made.

WASA’s email to staff, which was signed by the act­ing head of Hu­man Re­sources, said, “Man­age­ment wish­es to thank all staff for their con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing this pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion and looks for­ward to your con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion and sup­port.”

The first ap­point­ments to WASA’s new ex­ec­u­tive were an­nounced in an in­ter­nal email dat­ed June 25, which said the board of com­mis­sion­ers had ap­proved a new lead­er­ship struc­ture ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive was dis­missed.

At that time, Joseph, the act­ing CEO, was giv­en over­sight of the Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion un­til the ap­point­ment of a sub­stan­tive di­rec­tor (now Bridglal).

Joseph was giv­en a new ex­ec­u­tive af­ter he re­placed for­mer CEO Kei­th Hal­l­i­day, who was fired by the board last week.

Oth­er mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive in­clude:

• Glason Gu­rusarans­ingh, head, North East Re­gion

• Fa­reed Ali, head, North West Re­gion

• Ryan Bachu, head, Cen­tral Re­gion

• Maria John, head, South West Re­gion

• Ren­ny Bharath, head, Project Im­ple­men­ta­tion

• Ronald Ramkalawan, head, Waste­water Projects

Eleven oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers are now act­ing in key roles across WASA.

They in­clude:

• Jee­van Joseph — chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (Ag)

• Na­tal­ie Hug­gins — cor­po­rate sec­re­tary/gen­er­al coun­sel (Ag)

• Mervyn Gib­son — di­rec­tor, Hu­man Re­sources (Ag)

• Lancelot Leza­ma — di­rec­tor, Fi­nance (Ag)

• Dain Ma­haraj — di­rec­tor, Cor­po­rate Ser­vices (Ag)

• Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh — di­rec­tor, Waste­water Ser­vices (Ag)

• Shawn Sa­landy — di­rec­tor, Strate­gic Pro­gramme De­vel­op­ment & Im­ple­men­ta­tion (Ag)

• Kendall Spencer — head, Pro­cure­ment (Ag)

• Rachelle Wilkie — head, Pay­ments, Trea­sury, Fi­nan­cial and Cap­i­tal Re­port­ing (Ag)

• Leah Gue­vara — head, Au­dit & Com­pli­ance (Ag)

• Cheryl Heather Blan­chard —head, Le­gal Ser­vices (Ag)

The ap­point­ments come amid on­go­ing back­lash over the dis­missal of Hal­l­i­day and eight ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers who were pre­vi­ous­ly re­cruit­ed to fa­cil­i­tate WASA’s re­form. Speak­ing in a me­dia con­fer­ence on Fri­day, for­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les ques­tioned what re­cruit­ment process was ap­plied in this case.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day di­rect­ed all ques­tions about the new ap­point­ments to the chair­man of WASA, say­ing the board is re­spon­si­ble for these ap­point­ments.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to WASA chair­man Roshan Bab­wah but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to press time.