Nine mem­bers of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) board have re­signed.

The au­thor­i­ty con­firmed this in an ad­ver­tise­ment in yes­ter­day’s news­pa­pers but the res­ig­na­tions oc­curred last week.

The out­go­ing mem­bers were com­mis­sion­er Jaque­line Cheesman, who re­signed ef­fec­tive May 2; chair­man Navin­dra Nan­ga and com­mis­sion­er Marui­cia Ram­nar­ine Singh-Zoro (May 3); com­mis­sion­er Col­in Bartholomew (May 4); deputy chair­man Al­ston Fournil­li­er, com­mis­sion­ers Charisa-Marie Fran­cois, Joel Ed­wards and Suni­ta Lemet (May 5); and com­mis­sion­er Car­ol Austin (May 6).

An 11-mem­ber WASA board, head­ed by Nan­ga, was ap­point­ed last De­cem­ber. The oth­er mem­bers of the board were Al­lis­ter Ban­doo and Ak­il McPher­son.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said it is stan­dard prac­tice for boards to re­sign when a new ad­min­is­tra­tion is in­stalled.

“I signed the let­ter to­day (yes­ter­day), in­di­cat­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tions,” Padarath said.

“I have been spend­ing a lot of my days and nights at WASA be­cause in the ab­sence of a board, the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tions of WASA does not stop and while we cam­paigned on the elec­tion trail a lot on is­sues that im­pact state en­ter­pris­es like WASA, it al­so re­quires us to bring about short-term and long-term changes to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, so the or­gan­i­sa­tion is not rud­der­less with­out a board.”

Asked how op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue with­out a chair­man, Padarath said, “The min­is­ter is in­struct­ing the CEO as we go along. I have a healthy work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Mr (Kei­throy) Hal­l­i­day at this time and we are en­sur­ing that the op­er­a­tions at WASA will con­tin­ue seam­less­ly.”

He added, “I have been spend­ing a lot more time in the board­room rather than the Ivory Tow­er of the min­istry. In or­der to get any­thing done, the min­is­ter needs to go in­to the board­room of these mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­nies that are op­er­at­ed by the state and, there­fore, a more hands-on ap­proach needs to be tak­en as op­posed to what we’ve seen the last ad­min­is­tra­tion tak­ing.”

Asked whether this could be con­sid­ered po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, Padarath sought to as­sure, “It is not a mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. What this has to do is that there is no board of di­rec­tors at this point in time. It will take a few weeks for the Gov­ern­ment to put in place a board be­cause it’s a process in which for that to hap­pen so that ques­tion does not arise at all.”

He em­pha­sised that this was not an ad­min­is­tra­tive shift in­volv­ing hir­ing or fir­ing and, as such, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties fall un­der the board gov­erned by rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion. Rather, he said his in­volve­ment per­tains to the op­er­a­tional as­pect of im­ple­ment­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to ad­dress the com­pa­ny’s chal­lenges and im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery to cus­tomers.

He not­ed that work­ers’ morale had been boost­ed since the UNC took of­fice, as they are look­ing for­ward to have an in­put in how the or­gan­i­sa­tion is struc­tured.

Al­so con­tact­ed, WASA CEO Hal­l­i­day said, “We are a crit­i­cal es­sen­tial ser­vice provider. There­fore, dur­ing this pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion, as we await the ap­point­ment of a new board, the dai­ly op­er­a­tions of the au­thor­i­ty will gen­er­al­ly con­tin­ue as nor­mal.”