Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has de­clared its full sup­port for new­ly ap­point­ed act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Jee­van Joseph, fol­low­ing sharp crit­i­cism from for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment yes­ter­day, WASA re­ject­ed what it de­scribed as the “mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion” of Joseph’s pro­fes­sion­al record and de­fend­ed his el­e­va­tion to the util­i­ty’s top ex­ec­u­tive post, stat­ing it had full con­fi­dence in his lead­er­ship and ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“Mr Jee­van Joseph is a high­ly ac­com­plished pro­fes­sion­al with over two decades of proven lead­er­ship and per­for­mance in the wa­ter and waste­water sec­tors. Since join­ing the Au­thor­i­ty in 2000, he has risen through the ranks based on mer­it, demon­strat­ing con­sis­tent ex­cel­lence at every lev­el of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. His ex­ten­sive op­er­a­tional ex­per­tise, in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, and strate­gic con­tri­bu­tions were key fac­tors in his re­cent ap­point­ment as Act­ing CEO,” the state­ment read.

The re­sponse came a day af­ter Gon­za­les la­belled Joseph a “non-per­former” dur­ing his pri­or tenure at the util­i­ty and ques­tioned the de­ci­sion to pro­mote him, al­leg­ing that Joseph lacked the ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to lead WASA through its on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion.

“A new CEO or act­ing CEO who was a low-lev­el man­ag­er, non-per­former in WASA was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of CEO with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Ab­solute­ly no ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, no ex­pe­ri­ence what­so­ev­er, no re­cruit­ment process put in place. Per­sons fill­ing se­nior ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions in that au­thor­i­ty with­out any re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria,” Gon­za­les said.

Joseph’s ap­point­ment as act­ing CEO took ef­fect on June 25, fol­low­ing the re­moval of Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day by the WASA board.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, Joseph brings more than two decades of tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence in the util­i­ties sec­tor, hav­ing built a dis­tin­guished ca­reer at the Au­thor­i­ty since join­ing in 2000.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so pushed back against Gon­za­les’s claims that Joseph lacked “de­cen­cy” for tak­ing cred­it for im­prove­ments to wa­ter ser­vice in east Trinidad, which Gon­za­les as­sert­ed were launched as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary, pri­or to Joseph’s ap­point­ment.

“WASA cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­jects the sug­ges­tion that there was any lack of ‘de­cen­cy’ in its com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­gard­ing wa­ter im­prove­ments in east Trinidad. Our fo­cus re­mains on de­liv­er­ing mea­sur­able re­sults for the pub­lic, and we will con­tin­ue to pro­vide ac­cu­rate up­dates on our progress,” the au­thor­i­ty stat­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, WASA re­fut­ed al­le­ga­tions made by Gon­za­les that a per­son pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed over cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions had been reap­point­ed to an ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“WASA un­equiv­o­cal­ly de­nies the false and base­less claim that any in­di­vid­ual pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed for al­leged cor­rup­tion has been reap­point­ed to an ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion. We re­quest that those mak­ing such al­le­ga­tions pro­vide sub­stan­ti­at­ed ev­i­dence or re­frain from spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that could af­fect the pub­lic’s trust in the Au­thor­i­ty,” the state­ment con­clud­ed.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says he is un­aware of any le­gal ac­tion be­ing pur­sued by ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers of the util­i­ty.

Speak­ing af­ter a con­stituen­cy meet­ing yes­ter­day, Padarath called on Gon­za­les to apol­o­gise to the na­tion for WASA’s fail­ings un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Padarath said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed a util­i­ty in cri­sis but has al­ready made sig­nif­i­cant progress since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as­sumed of­fice in April. He cred­it­ed im­proved lead­er­ship and man­age­ment for en­abling WASA staff to de­liv­er wa­ter more ef­fec­tive­ly to com­mu­ni­ties across East, Cen­tral, and South Trinidad, as well as along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

“The woes of WASA from the past will no longer be al­lowed to con­tin­ue. We now have round pegs in round holes com­pared to what we have in­her­it­ed,” he said.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing long-term so­lu­tions to strength­en the wa­ter sup­ply, in­clud­ing in­stalling de­sali­na­tion plants in coastal com­mu­ni­ties.

Dis­cus­sions have al­ready been held with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), which Padarath said has agreed to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment and WASA to im­prove in­fra­struc­ture.

Padarath not­ed that WASA is ex­pect­ed to adopt a new “per­sona and com­plex­ion,” char­ac­terised by stronger cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and greater re­spon­sive­ness to the pub­lic.

Turn­ing to the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (DE­SAL­COTT), Padarath con­firmed that an­nu­al main­te­nance works will now take place in Au­gust rather than the usu­al Sep­tem­ber-to-No­vem­ber pe­ri­od, to re­duce dis­rup­tions dur­ing a crit­i­cal time for cit­i­zens.

“I’ve spo­ken with the act­ing CEO of DE­SAL­COTT, the Chair­man of WASA, and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in my min­istry to fa­cil­i­tate this ad­just­ment,” he said.

The new main­te­nance dates are sched­uled for Au­gust 19 to 23.

Padarath said res­i­dents in South and Cen­tral Trinidad have long ex­pressed con­cern over wa­ter cuts dur­ing a pe­ri­od when hun­dreds of thou­sands of Hin­dus pre­pare for Di­vali and Navra­tri cel­e­bra­tions.