Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer iden­ti­fied to be at the helm of the trans­formed Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), who is from Zim­bab­we, has died. Guardian Me­dia was told that the WASA board is now pur­su­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the run­ner-up can­di­date, who is al­so a for­eign res­i­dent.

Chair­man Ravi Nan­ga, SC, said that the can­di­date, whom he de­clined to iden­ti­fy at this time, has sought more in­for­ma­tion on the job. Nan­ga said that WASA was hop­ing to tidy up ne­go­ti­a­tions soon, with an op­ti­mistic start date of Sep­tem­ber. He not­ed that one spot, the Di­rec­tor of Fi­nance post, was filled, but the hired in­di­vid­ual mi­grat­ed, so they are now look­ing at an­oth­er can­di­date.

Nan­ga said of the nine new man­agers WASA will hire, four will be lo­cals. Last month, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said WASA would hire nine new man­agers as its ex­ec­u­tive team.

The com­pa­ny’s act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive, Kelvin Ro­main, will re­main at the com­pa­ny and will be ab­sorbed in­to the new struc­ture. “Re­struc­tur­ing is on its way, and we hit a very im­por­tant mile­stone last week with the HRAC (Hu­man Re­source Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee), which ap­proved the terms and con­di­tions of the new ex­ec­u­tive.

“We ex­pect the (WASA) board will make a very im­por­tant an­nounce­ment on that in the com­ing weeks be­cause they have got­ten the green light to pro­ceed with it. Once that is done, the next lev­el of lead­er­ship will be about 34 deputies to the nine that we are bring­ing on board. That will hap­pen in the com­ing months,” Gon­za­les said.

In Jan­u­ary 2021, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it would ini­ti­ate a trans­for­ma­tion plan for the state util­i­ty af­ter it pre­sent­ed a sub-com­mit­tee re­port to Par­lia­ment on the de­plorable state of the coun­try’s wa­ter util­i­ty. The re­port de­scribed the state-man­aged in­sti­tu­tion as cor­rupt, un­pro­duc­tive, un­wieldy, and an or­gan­i­sa­tion where ef­fi­cien­cy was sac­ri­ficed for po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age. In the last ten years, it has cost tax­pay­ers $23 bil­lion, with on­ly 46.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), hav­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter.

“The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has be­come an un­wieldy, un­pro­duc­tive, and un­re­spon­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion that has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and is no longer ef­fi­cient­ly serv­ing the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ef­fi­cien­cy was sac­ri­ficed for po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and man­age­ment ac­count­abil­i­ty ex­changed for in­dus­tri­al sta­bil­i­ty, re­sult­ing in an or­gan­i­sa­tion in which there is lit­tle cor­re­la­tion be­tween the con­tents of col­lec­tive agree­ments and the re­al­i­ties of pro­vid­ing a na­tion­al ser­vice to the pop­u­la­tion at an af­ford­able and ac­cept­able cost to tax­pay­ers,” the sub­com­mit­tee’s re­port in­to WASA stat­ed.

Missed dead­lines and de­lays

How­ev­er, the state en­ti­ty keeps miss­ing dead­lines, from fi­nal­is­ing a plan to defin­ing the job spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the new pro­posed lead­er­ship team. It took al­most a year for the plan to be fin­ished and for it to be ap­proved by the Cab­i­net. In the mean­time, the com­pa­ny lost the man it had orig­i­nal­ly ear­marked for the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor role, Dr Lennox Sealy. He re­signed on Ju­ly 8, 2021, five months af­ter he was ap­point­ed to the post. Fol­low­ing Sealy’s res­ig­na­tion, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said that the Gov­ern­ment “felt that the trans­for­ma­tion was not pro­ceed­ing at a suf­fi­cient­ly rapid pace.”

“When he was made ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, he was asked to pro­duce a trans­for­ma­tion plan and a struc­ture for the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty by April. That was one of the main man­dates he had, and un­for­tu­nate­ly, he got dis­tract­ed by the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. I thought he was a bit over­whelmed be­cause every day you have to be out, and WASA is so vul­ner­a­ble to dis­rup­tion be­cause of the lack of pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance. Al­most every sin­gle day, you have dis­rup­tions tak­ing place, and it is very easy for one to be over­whelmed by the num­ber of com­plaints you get. That can take you off your game as a man­ag­er from lead­ing,” Gon­za­les said in an in­ter­view with the News­day af­ter Sealy’s de­par­ture.

Last year, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on the de­lays, Gon­za­les said WASA re­ceived over 1,500 ap­pli­ca­tions from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, USA, Eu­rope, Eng­land, Africa, and the Mid­dle East. The CEO’s po­si­tion at­tract­ed close to 500 ap­pli­cants.

The man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions be­ing sought were for wa­ter man­age­ment, ser­vices, tech­nolo­gies, fu­ture sys­tems and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cor­po­rate fi­nance, trans­for­ma­tion, and cen­tral ser­vices.

WASA’s cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team is head­ed by Ro­main, who works with five di­rec­tors, in­clud­ing the head of waste­water projects and wa­ter projects, which are all act­ing po­si­tions. And since then, and un­til a trans­for­ma­tion plan is im­ple­ment­ed, tax­pay­ers have been foot­ing WASA’s $2.1 bil­lion an­nu­al sub­ven­tion.

Once the new lead­er­ship team is ap­point­ed, the time­line for the trans­for­ma­tion is three years. Since 2020, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said he was await­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the wa­ter com­pa­ny, af­ter which the Gov­ern­ment will act “to re­struc­ture WASA while aim­ing to min­imise the loss of jobs, max­imise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, re­duce the sub­sidy,” and pro­vide an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply to the na­tion.