A new gov­ern­ment in­vari­ably means a chang­ing of the guard, as the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­points per­sons who bet­ter un­der­stand its ob­jec­tives. Boards are be­ing changed, and man­agers in state en­ter­pris­es are at risk. The key cri­te­ria that should be used in the se­lec­tion process for the new ap­pointees are com­pe­tence and ca­pac­i­ty. In the last week, the CEO of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and nine oth­ers were dis­missed, the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor’s con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed, and a new gov­er­nor was ap­point­ed.

Per­son­nel changes at WASA were in­evitable, giv­en the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s op­po­si­tion to the re­struc­tur­ing plan de­signed by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. The me­dia re­lease stat­ed that the new act­ing CEO demon­strat­ed “the board’s com­mit­ment to re­defin­ing the path for­ward for the au­thor­i­ty, fo­cused on achiev­ing eq­ui­ty in the sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pipe-borne wa­ter across Trinidad and To­ba­go.” The im­pli­ca­tion is that WASA’s wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies were skewed and in­equitable, not that it was in­ef­fi­cient. The words car­ry po­lit­i­cal con­no­ta­tions that would ap­peal to this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sup­port­ers.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath was scathing in his con­dem­na­tion of the dis­missed CEO, with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port­ing de­tails or out­lin­ing the al­ter­na­tives to be pur­sued. It was no­table that the me­dia re­lease by­passed the fact that WASA re­quires state sup­port of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly and has been the sub­ject of sev­er­al re­struc­tur­ing at­tempts and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes, which made no per­ma­nent im­prove­ment in its op­er­a­tions. These in­clude or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and per­son­nel changes which took place dur­ing the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter’s first stint in of­fice. What is the al­ter­na­tive to the re­struc­tur­ing plan? How will WASA be made a vi­able en­ti­ty and ful­fil the promise of “wa­ter for all?”

The ap­point­ment of a new Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor was not un­ex­pect­ed. Dif­fer­ent min­is­ters im­plied that the names of the high­est forex users would be dis­closed. One could spec­u­late that Dr Alvin Hi­laire’s com­ment that he would not dis­close con­fi­den­tial da­ta may have cre­at­ed a rift with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion, though no rea­son for the ter­mi­na­tion was giv­en. How­ev­er, the judg­ment in the case of the for­mer gov­er­nor said dis­clo­sure of con­fi­den­tial da­ta was not the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor’s pre­rog­a­tive.

The new gov­er­nor is a ca­reer banker as a for­mer First Cit­i­zens CEO and a for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter. He brings grav­i­tas and ex­pe­ri­ence to the po­si­tion. His ap­point­ment has been wel­comed by busi­ness stake­hold­ers who called for him to place greater em­pha­sis on im­prov­ing ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, he ac­knowl­edged that ad­dress­ing the forex short­age was a ma­jor, if not the crit­i­cal task he would face. He not­ed that the pub­lic should feel com­fort­able that for­eign ex­change was be­ing utilised in the best way. He in­di­cat­ed that poli­cies to ar­rive at the best use of the forex should be in­formed by un­der­stand­ing the da­ta show­ing its ac­tu­al use. He al­so em­pha­sised the need for con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Chang­ing per­son­nel is on­ly one step in suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dress­ing the se­ri­ous chal­lenges and com­pli­ca­tions that this ad­min­is­tra­tion must face. Many more steps are re­quired to im­prove wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion and re­duce gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies; to man­age gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture whilst re­duc­ing the deficit; to gen­er­ate more tax rev­enue, whilst mak­ing the bu­reau­cra­cy more ef­fi­cient; to im­prove the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance; the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion; and to ad­dress the so­cial se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem chal­lenges. These are com­plex prob­lems that must not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, and ex­pec­ta­tions are high.