Shal­iza Has­sanali

and An­na-Lisa Paul

A spe­cial­ly-com­mis­sioned re­port in­to the op­er­a­tions of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has found the cash-strapped en­ti­ty plagued by fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, a lack of man­age­r­i­al ac­count­abil­i­ty, cor­rup­tion, par­al­lel op­er­a­tions by rep­re­sen­ta­tive trade unions and a gen­er­al re­fusal by em­ploy­ees to work.

The find­ings, which were con­tained in a 135-page re­port, was dis­sect­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Mon­day dur­ing a spe­cial sit­ting of the Cab­i­net.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Row­ley ap­point­ed a Cab­i­net Sub-Com­mit­tee chaired by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, to look in­to WASA’s op­er­a­tions and come up with a com­pre­hen­sive plan to turn around the state-run or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In­clud­ed in the com­mit­tee were min­is­ters Don­na Cox, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Stu­art Young, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Franklin Khan.

On De­cem­ber 11, 2020, Row­ley re­ceived a copy of the re­port which Guardian Me­dia was able to ob­tain.

In it, the com­mit­tee ex­am­ined is­sues such as man­age­ment lev­els, in­come and ex­pen­di­ture, em­ploy­ees al­lowances, over­time ex­pen­di­ture, de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter pur­chas­es, wa­ter pro­duc­tion, fi­nan­cial analy­sis, and debt pro­file.

Un­der the head­line “Cur­rent Mod­el,” the re­port stat­ed that WASA has be­come an un­wieldy, over­staffed, un­pro­duc­tive, and un­re­spon­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion that has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and is no longer ef­fi­cient­ly serv­ing cit­i­zens.

It stat­ed, “There is a gen­er­al lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty per­vad­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the ex­ist­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture is the very an­tithe­sis of a high­ly pro­duc­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Over decades, the re­port stat­ed, 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 re­li­able ser­vice to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion at an af­ford­able and ac­cept­able cost to the tax­pay­ers.

WASA op­er­at­ing blind­ly

It al­so stat­ed the au­thor­i­ty has been op­er­at­ing blind­ly and not­ed an ab­sence of cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion in key ar­eas such as WASA’s cus­tomer data­base, li­a­bil­i­ties, staffing lev­els, payables lo­ca­tion of trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion main.

The com­mit­tee con­clud­ed, “The dys­func­tion­al in­her­ent in WASA are so deeply en­trenched that, in its cur­rent form, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is in­ca­pable of ef­fec­tive­ly sat­is­fy­ing its cus­tomers’ de­mands and the State’s man­date. Con­tin­u­a­tion of the cur­rent WASA mod­el will there­fore gen­er­ate fur­ther de­cline and ex­ac­er­bate the down­ward spi­ral in all as­pects of the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tion.”

The re­port added main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo leaves the state in the “un­sus­tain­able and un­ac­cept­able po­si­tion of con­tin­u­ing to fund, to the tune of al­most $2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that lacks the abil­i­ty to trans­form it­self.”

It said it will be an ex­er­cise in “gross fu­til­i­ty to ig­nore all the ex­i­gen­cies as­so­ci­at­ed with at­tempt­ing to op­er­ate/cre­ate an in­dus­tri­al en­ti­ty by bring­ing to­geth­er sev­en gov­ern­ment-op­er­at­ed wa­ter pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties in­to one le­gal and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al frame­work. This mod­el has long out­lived its use­ful­ness and to con­tin­ue con­duct­ing prover­bial surgery on WASA in the hope that it would be­come ef­fi­cient would be an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty.”

It stat­ed WASA’s in­tractable is­sues have man­i­fest­ed it­self in the form of op­er­a­tional and ser­vice fail­ures where hun­dreds of thou­sands of cit­i­zens are un­able to get ei­ther a rea­son­able sup­ply of wa­ter or a suit­able and time­ly re­sponse to their plight.

“WASA’s ex­ec­u­tives are not held to ac­count, de­ploy very lim­it­ed con­trols, are not ef­fec­tive­ly reg­u­lat­ed, ap­ply very an­ti­quat­ed, tech­nol­o­gy-de­fi­cient sys­tem and are gen­er­al­ly de­void of an un­der­stand­ing of WASA’s role, re­la­tion­ship and the con­se­quences of the util­i­ty’s ac­tions on the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.”

Big loss­es through leaks

An­oth­er is­sue, the com­mit­tee raised was wa­ter lost through leaks and theft which is es­ti­mat­ed with­in the range of 40 to 50 per cent.

This prob­lem, the re­port stat­ed has led to pub­lic mis­trust in WASA, an un­will­ing­ness of some cus­tomers to pay even one of the world’s cheap­est wa­ter rates and WASA be­ing un­able to sur­vive with­out sig­nif­i­cant Gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

With this in mind, the sub-com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed, “that the on­ly prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion lies in the in­cre­men­tal dis­so­lu­tion of WASA in its present con­fig­u­ra­tion and its re­place­ment with the cre­ation of a Wa­ter Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny with­in a re­vised wa­ter sec­tor mod­el.”

The new mod­el for T&T speaks of a wa­ter sec­tor that is tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven, cus­tomer-fo­cused and com­mer­cial­ly vi­able with an op­er­a­tional­ly ef­fi­cient Wa­ter Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny in the lead.

“Fur­ther, as this new ori­en­ta­tion emerges over a pe­ri­od of three years, the ex­ist­ing struc­ture, WASA has to be ra­tio­nalised and wound down, trans­fer­ring the as­sets of the old or­der in­to the emerg­ing (struc­ture) com­pa­ny.”

The sub-com­mit­tee has iden­ti­fied a num­ber of en­abling tran­si­tion/trans­for­ma­tion fac­tors that must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed. These in­clude:

• the es­tab­lish­ment of a new wa­ter com­pa­ny

• ac­qui­si­tion of wa­ter man­age­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties

• wind­ing up and con­ces­sion­ary ne­go­ti­a­tions with the three reg­is­tered ma­jor­i­ty trade unions

• aligned par­al­lel op­er­a­tions

• tech­nol­o­gy en­hance­ment.

In this re­gard, the sub-com­mit­tee en­vis­ages the cre­ation of a tran­si­tion team/con­tract­ed en­ti­ty to con­duct/fa­cil­i­tate this as­pect of the tran­si­tion, adding that fund­ing will need to be avail­able to en­sure this.

Re­set re­quired

The re­port ex­plained that it was a time for a “re­set” in this crit­i­cal sec­tor.

The event of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the re­port stat­ed, had made it im­pos­si­ble for gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue in­ject­ing mon­ey in­to WASA with­out pro­por­tion­ate re­turns.

Af­ter many years of cost­ly in­ter­ven­tions, the re­port stat­ed “the ev­i­dence points to an over­whelm­ing lack of fo­cus on com­pre­hen­sive, sus­tain­able, se­quenced in­ter­ven­tions, re­sult­ing in Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment be­ing di­rect­ed to ad-hoc projects that have not cu­mu­la­tive­ly im­proved the sup­ply of wa­ter to the coun­try.”

De­spite re­ceiv­ing some $21.6 bil­lion in Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions from 2010 to 2020, WASA has not been able to ful­fil its man­date “with an es­ti­mat­ed 34 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion cur­rent­ly get­ting a 24/7 sup­ply of wa­ter.”

De­spite these an­nu­al sub­ven­tions, WASA does not pos­sess the in-house equip­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly un­der­take one of its core func­tions which is pipeline in­stal­la­tion and re­pairs and is heav­i­ly re­liant on con­trac­tors to whom they are heav­i­ly in­debt­ed.

“The ex­tent of this un­quan­ti­fied debt is the sub­ject of a seem­ing­ly in­ter­minable ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise, re­sult­ing in a high lev­el of un­record­ed ac­count payables. The au­thor­i­ty’s over­all fi­nan­cial per­for­mance has been poor with chron­ic deficits be­ing a reg­u­lar fea­ture. This is breed­ing ground for cor­rup­tion and there is con­cern that there is a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion in the pro­cure­ment of ser­vices by the au­thor­i­ty.”

It al­so stat­ed that the ex­ceed­ing­ly top-heavy man­age­ment of WASA is “in­ef­fec­tive and con­tents of freely ne­go­ti­at­ed col­lec­tive agree­ments re­veal a phi­los­o­phy of se­cur­ing in­dus­tri­al peace by ced­ing con­trol of the au­thor­i­ty to the unions, to the point where the unions have now ef­fec­tive­ly sub­sumed many man­age­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. In some cas­es, the agree­ments con­strain the au­thor­i­ty from reengi­neer­ing and in­tro­duc­ing new and con­tem­po­rary wa­ter man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies in­to its op­er­a­tions with­out first se­cur­ing the union’s ap­proval. There ex­ists com­pelling ev­i­dence as well that the unions have be­come sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices to the au­thor­i­ty whilst it seems that man­age­ment turns a blind eye to this re­al­i­ty.”

Fur­ther, they found a “Staff cul­ture with an in­grained men­tal­i­ty of earn­ing in­flat­ed re­mu­ner­a­tions with­out at­ten­dance, ad­di­tion of val­ue and ex­ces­sive union in­ter­fer­ence.”

Flashback January; Residents carry water bottles to refill at the standpipe on Serraneau Road, Belmont Port-of-Spain where the community were without for a few days.

ANISTO ALVES

CHAL­LENGES TO MOV­ING TO A FU­TURE MOD­EL

Staffing

WASA cur­rent­ly op­er­ates with an or­ga­ni­za­tion struc­ture that dif­fers vast­ly from that which was ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 1999 for 1,723 em­ploy­ees. Its em­ploy­ee list­ing cur­rent­ly stands at 4,828 em­ploy­ees which con­sists of 3,043 month­ly paid and 1,785 dai­ly paid work­ers. This fig­ure ex­cludes the 47 mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team; the Adopt a Riv­er Pro­gramme (14); the Beetham Waste­water Project (23); the To­ba­go Waste­water Project (4); the To­ba­go Ex­pan­sion Ser­vices Project (8); and Cus­tomer Con­tact Cen­tre Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (31).

The re­port al­so sug­gest­ed that WASA is “al­so ex­ceed­ing­ly top-heavy” with 426 man­age­ment per­son­nel in­clud­ing eight di­rec­tors; 19 heads; 32 se­nior man­agers; 88 de­part­men­tal man­agers; 25 as­sis­tant man­agers; 35 sec­tion man­agers; 23 unit man­agers; and 196 su­per­vi­sors.

Ir­reg­u­lar and Un­jus­ti­fied Prac­tices

The re­port found, “A lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty is deeply em­bed­ded in the cul­ture and gov­er­nance style of WASA. The Au­thor­i­ty’s aver­sion to a re­sult-ori­ent­ed or­der of busi­ness and its no-con­se­quence en­vi­ron­ment is ev­i­dent by a a lack of rou­tine per­for­mance as­sess­ments which has cre­at­ed an av­enue for cor­rup­tion.”

Or­ga­ni­za­tion Cul­ture

WASA has an em­bed­ded non-pro­duc­tive so­cial­ly ori­ent­ed work cul­ture that is but­tressed by a view that giv­en the crit­i­cal na­ture of the re­source, the State is du­ty bound to main­tain the op­er­a­tions of the in­sti­tu­tion. Suc­ces­sive man­age­ment teams have proven pow­er­less to the unions’ en­croach­ment on the Au­thor­i­ty’s rights to man­age, di­rect and own its’ op­er­a­tional af­fairs.

Wa­ter qual­i­ty has been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing

Over the past 20 years but mores in the past decade, the ma­jor­i­ty of Trinidad’s wa­ter­shed ar­eas has been show­ing sig­nif­i­cant degra­da­tion caused pri­mar­i­ly by un­reg­u­lat­ed and poor land use prac­tices which pol­lute rivers which are WASA’s ma­jor source of sup­ply, with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants and heavy sed­i­men­ta­tion. Wa­ter pol­lu­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly high tur­bid­i­ty, af­ter heavy rain­fall events reg­u­lar re­sults in plant shut­down as the ma­jor­i­ty of WASA’s plants are not de­signed to treat wa­ter with high sed­i­ment lev­els.

Heavy re­liance on de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter

The over-re­liance on de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter from De­sal­cott places WASA in a very vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion and cre­ates sup­ply-chain risks.

This vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is man­i­fest­ed in the re­duc­tion of pro­duc­tion lev­els by De­sal­cott from time to time, which is seen as a lever­age to se­cure set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing in­debt­ed­ness to the com­pa­ny.

The cost of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter cou­pled with the con­trac­tu­al re­quire­ment to pay for same in US dol­lars has crip­pled WASA and re­sult­ed in a di­rect strain on the Trea­sury.

EPA: We are aware of cor­rup­tion at WASA

Aware of the trans­for­ma­tion at WASA which they claimed has been on­go­ing, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) which rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers said they have been ad­vo­cat­ing for prop­er man­age­ment sys­tems to be put in place for a num­ber of years.

EPA Pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son ex­pressed con­cern as he said, “There is no need to throw out the ba­by with the bath wa­ter.”

He stat­ed, “If there is a man­age­ment is­sue, then you need to change the man­age­ment sys­tems.”

Wait­ing on the fi­nal re­port which is ex­pect­ed to be laid in Par­lia­ment lat­er this week, Richard­son said the EPA was not in sup­port of the pri­va­ti­za­tion of WASA as they be­lieve, “This is not in the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The EPA met with WASA yes­ter­day re­gard­ing out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for their mem­bers.

Richard­son said this re­port would now force them to reeval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion and he im­me­di­ate­ly called on Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to meet with them.

Ad­mit­ting he was aware of cor­rupt prac­tices at the state-run or­ga­ni­za­tion, the EPA head re­called the mur­der of for­mer Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er Derek Hook­er who was shot dead out­side his home in 2015; and the mys­te­ri­ous fire at the St Joseph Head Of­fice in 2016 - as he said, “If there are per­sons who are re­spon­si­ble and have not been per­form­ing…then by all means, they must be re­placed. But the rank and file work­ers on the ground who been work­ing with­in the con­straints…ought not to suf­fer be­cause of the mis­man­age­ment of WASA.”

He went on, “The work­ing class has not had an im­pact on the de­ci­sions tak­en by the man­age­ment.”

Richard­son said a large num­ber of per­sons de­pend on this job to live and al­so send their kids to school,as he con­clud­ed, “Man­age­ment should leave our work­ers in­tact…there is no need to re­place WASA, they need to re­struc­ture WASA. “

Ef­forts to con­tact the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) proved fu­tile.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion will host a me­dia brief­ing to­day at 10 am at its of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain.