Shal­iza Has­sanali

All 426 man­age­ment po­si­tions at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will be made re­dun­dant in the first phase of the trans­for­ma­tion plan cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed at the cash-strapped pub­lic util­i­ty. This mea­sure alone will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce WASA’s month­ly wage bill, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les told the Sun­day Guardian in an in­ter­view on Fri­day.

He ex­plained that while the plan is to cut man­age­ment po­si­tions by 50 per cent, with­in the new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture all the cur­rent po­si­tions will be elim­i­nat­ed.

“There will be new job de­scrip­tions for all man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions which will be ad­ver­tised ex­ter­nal­ly and in­ter­nal­ly. This would al­low all man­agers at WASA to ap­ply for the posts based on their req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

“All po­si­tions will be­come re­dun­dant in or­der to fill the new po­si­tions in the new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture. So, in oth­er words, all po­si­tions with­in the cur­rent struc­ture would come to an end.”

Gon­za­les said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 man­age­ment po­si­tions will have to be filled and “all de­part­ments that are led by a man­ag­er, se­nior man­agers or var­i­ous lev­els of man­agers will be im­pact­ed by this trans­for­ma­tion.”

He added: “In some cas­es, we would not have a need for some de­part­ments.”

The min­is­ter said nepo­tism and favouritism will be erad­i­cat­ed from the hir­ing process.

“A lot of peo­ple who are en­gi­neers in­side of WASA, or call them­selves en­gi­neers, or oc­cu­py an en­gi­neer po­si­tion...they have not stud­ied en­gi­neer­ing or hold an en­gi­neer­ing de­gree from a recog­nised uni­ver­si­ty,” Gon­za­les said.

“When you have a re­struc­tured or­gan­i­sa­tion with new job de­scrip­tions and qual­i­fi­ca­tions you can on­ly oc­cu­py (a po­si­tion) if you have the req­ui­site skills and qual­i­fi­ca­tions. What hap­pened in the past was the cre­ation of po­si­tions to stack these or­gan­i­sa­tions with friends and fam­i­ly, politi­cians and peo­ple who are aligned with the union. That is the rea­son why the or­gan­i­sa­tion is in sham­bles.”

Gon­za­les said deep-seat­ed sys­temic dys­func­tion­al­i­ties have to be cor­rect­ed ur­gent­ly to im­prove WASA’s over­all ser­vice.

The min­is­ter re­ferred to the 2020 Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port on the op­er­a­tions of WASA which iden­ti­fied “top-heavy” man­agers and the eight lev­els of “man­age­ment com­mand” as part of the coun­ter­pro­duc­tive op­er­at­ing sys­tem at the util­i­ty. This in­clud­ed eight ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­ing di­rec­tors, 19 ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment heads, 32 se­nior man­agers, 88 de­part­men­tal man­agers, 25 as­sis­tant man­agers, 35 sec­tion man­agers, 23 unit man­agers and 196 su­per­vi­sors.

In 1999, Cab­i­net ap­proved four lev­els of man­age­r­i­al staff con­sist­ing of 172 em­ploy­ees and an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of 1,723 staff mem­bers. How­ev­er, WASA cur­rent­ly has on its pay­roll 4,828 em­ploy­ees con­sist­ing of 3,043 month­ly paid and 1,785 dai­ly paid work­ers. This in­cludes em­ploy­ees with the des­ig­na­tion of man­ag­er who su­per­vised “no one” or “just one or two staff mem­bers” un­der their con­trol, Gon­za­les said.

He gave as an ex­am­ple for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke who holds the po­si­tion of As­sis­tant Man­ag­er, Em­ploy­ee Re­sourc­ing, al­though he does not man­age any­one at WASA.

Gon­za­les said the month­ly salaries of some man­agers ranged be­tween $20,000 and $40,000 and the to­tal wage bill for WASA’s 426 man­agers to­tals $5 mil­lion.

“With a re­struc­tured and re-or­gan­ised ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture cer­tain­ly we would not be spend­ing that kind of mon­ey in salaries and al­lowances,” said the min­is­ter as he out­lined plans to re­duce WASA’s an­nu­al bud­get by 25 per cent and in­crease rev­enue to $1 bil­lion by 2023.

Gon­za­les said the board chaired by Ravi Nan­ga has been “tak­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against man­agers.” He warned that if the board fails to in­ter­vene in WASA’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions “all hell will break loose.”

“If you be­lieve the wa­ter sup­ply is bad in the coun­try, trust me, it would be ten times worst and that is be­cause we do not have prop­er man­age­ment in place.”

To en­sure the util­i­ty is run ef­fi­cient­ly and does not get caught up in red tape, WASA will hire five re­gion­al man­agers to im­prove wa­ter de­liv­ery and dis­tri­b­u­tion, said Gon­za­les who fur­ther ex­plained: “When you put a re­gion­al man­ag­er who now has the au­ton­o­my to make de­ci­sions and you hold that man­ag­er ac­count­able for en­sur­ing that peo­ple get wa­ter, that sim­ple or­gan­i­sa­tion of man­age­ment will in­evitably have an im­pact on the sup­ply of wa­ter in a com­mu­ni­ty.”

The re­gion­al man­agers will re­port to act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main and their con­tracts will be per­for­mance-based.

Af­ter get­ting the all-clear from Cab­i­net for the trans­for­ma­tion plan, WASA’s board met on Fri­day and im­me­di­ate­ly es­tab­lished an “of­fice of trans­for­ma­tion” com­pris­ing ex­ter­nal con­sul­tants and WASA em­ploy­ees who will re­port di­rect­ly to the board.

Ad­mit­ting that the trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise will be a dif­fi­cult and painful ex­pe­ri­ence for some work­ers, Gon­za­les said: “I don’t take com­fort in this. This is go­ing to be very trau­mat­ic for any­one who is go­ing to be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by this trans­for­ma­tion but I have been giv­en a bit­ter chal­ice. In that bit­ter chal­ice, I have to make de­ci­sions that are not in the in­ter­est of a nar­row few but will ben­e­fit the coun­try at large.”

He said he knows he will have to make tough de­ci­sions “that may not be po­lit­i­cal­ly at­trac­tive” but he is con­vinced that “this is not a job for the faint of heart.”

PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste has warned that a lot of jobs to be cut dur­ing WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise and is pre­dict­ing that the util­i­ty will end up like Petrotrin. How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said Gov­ern­ment had re­struc­tured Petrotrin which was los­ing bil­lions of dol­lars and turned it in­to a prof­it-mak­ing en­ti­ty through Her­itage.

“If he (Bap­tiste) is com­par­ing WASA’s re­struc­tur­ing to that of Petrotrin, then I say as min­is­ter, Hal­lelu­jah,” he said.

Gon­za­les said in 2011 WASA had sourced a $397 mil­lion loan from the IDB to down­size its staff. How­ev­er, sev­er­al of the work­ers who ac­cept­ed VSEP pack­ages were re­hired, bring­ing the work­force to 5,285.

“Up to this day, WASA is still re­pay­ing for that IDB loan,” he said.

For the trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise, Gov­ern­ment will get fund­ing from the IDB and CAF and in three weeks Gon­za­les will seek Cab­i­net ap­proval for a cap­i­tal in­vest­ment pro­gramme for wa­ter sup­ply im­prove­ments across the coun­try. The first phase of the pro­gramme will tar­get com­mu­ni­ties re­ceiv­ing wa­ter less than three days a week.

“I look for­ward to Cab­i­net ap­prov­ing that pro­gramme. It is be­ing fi­nalised as we speak. It will al­so move the au­thor­i­ty close to be­ing pre­pared for a rate re­view be­cause it would meet all the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s stan­dards as it re­lates to cus­tomer ser­vice,” he said.