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Monday, July 14, 2025

Jeevan gets new WASA team: Acting CEO heads 11 member executive

by

Kejan Haynes
17 days ago
20250627

The new act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Jee­van Joseph, could re­ceive a month­ly com­pen­sa­tion pack­age of $108,000.

This fig­ure comes from in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia de­tail­ing the pro­posed salaries of new­ly ap­point­ed se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at the State util­i­ty.

The ap­point­ments were an­nounced in an in­ter­nal email sent to staff on Wednes­day, the same day for­mer CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and nine oth­er top ex­ec­u­tives were fired, which said the board of com­mis­sion­ers had ap­proved a new lead­er­ship struc­ture ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly. How­ev­er, the salaries were not dis­closed in the cor­re­spon­dence sent to staff. That was cir­cu­lat­ed in a sep­a­rate doc­u­ment re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia.

The act­ing CEO will have a ten-man ex­ec­u­tive team in var­i­ous po­si­tions tak­ing charge of the au­thor­i­ty, with salaries re­port­ed­ly rang­ing from $50,000 to $73,500. It was un­clear if mem­bers of the new ex­ec­u­tive team will be re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al perks and al­lowances which could see their month­ly salaries in­creas­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the email, Joseph, “will have over­sight of the Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion.”

Sources told Guardian Me­dia an­oth­er per­son is be­ing con­sid­ered for the role of Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions but that name was not in­clud­ed in the email.

The email al­so said Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh, act­ing Di­rec­tor of Waste­water Ser­vices, will over­see the Cus­tomer Care Di­vi­sion “un­til the re­spec­tive ap­point­ments are made.”

A name is al­so be­ing con­sid­ered for that post but it was not list­ed in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion to staff ei­ther.

Per­sads­ingh is al­so the coun­cil­lor for La For­tune/Debe North in the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Mean­while, Rachelle Wilkie, act­ing Head of Pay­ments, Trea­sury, Fi­nan­cial and Cap­i­tal Re­port­ing, “will co­or­di­nate the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion un­til Ju­ly 2, 2025” ac­cord­ing to the email.

In ad­di­tion to Joseph’s $108,000 pack­age, ten oth­er in­di­vid­u­als have been ap­point­ed in act­ing roles, with month­ly salaries at ei­ther $50,000 or $73,500, de­pend­ing on the post. The named ex­ec­u­tives are:

Na­tal­ie Hug­gins, Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary/Gen­er­al Coun­sel (Ag)

Mervyn Gib­son, Di­rec­tor, Hu­man Re­sources (Ag)

Lancelot Leza­ma, Di­rec­tor, Fi­nance (Ag)

Dain Ma­haraj, Di­rec­tor, Cor­po­rate Ser­vices (Ag)

Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh, Di­rec­tor, Waste­water Ser­vices (Ag)

Shawn Sa­landy, Di­rec­tor, Strate­gic Pro­gramme De­vel­op­ment & Im­ple­men­ta­tion (Ag)

Kendall Spencer, Head, Pro­cure­ment (Ag)

Rachelle Wilkie, Head, Pay­ments, Trea­sury, Fi­nan­cial and Cap­i­tal Re­port­ing (Ag)

Leah Gue­vara, Head, Au­dit & Com­pli­ance (Ag)

Cheryl Heather Blan­chard, Head, Le­gal Ser­vices (Ag)

It re­mains un­clear what re­cruit­ment process, if any, was fol­lowed in se­lect­ing ex­ter­nal per­son­nel, or whether any had pre­vi­ous­ly worked at WASA.

Last year in an in­ter­view for­mer, then-min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said WASA re­ceived over 1,500 ap­pli­ca­tions from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, USA, Eu­rope, Eng­land, Africa, and the Mid­dle East for the CEO po­si­tion, which at­tract­ed close to 500 ap­pli­cants.

WASA had orig­i­nal­ly picked a CEO from Zim­bab­we. How­ev­er, he died be­fore tak­ing up of­fice, open­ing the door for now-sacked Hal­l­i­day, a na­tive of St Kitts and Nevis. Hal­l­i­day pre­vi­ous­ly served as the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty.

Hal­l­i­day had been re­ceiv­ing a $100,000 salary, as well as an $8,000 hous­ing al­lowance, a com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle, and ad­di­tion­al perks, along with el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for a per­for­mance bonus tied to spe­cif­ic tar­gets.

Speak­ing in a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence back in May, when she lit­er­al­ly tore up the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the plan was de­signed to “de­monise” work­ers. She said her Gov­ern­ment’s changes would re­sult in an es­ti­mat­ed $30 mil­lion in an­nu­al sav­ings at WASA, which could be redi­rect­ed to­ward na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath had de­scribed WASA’s ex­ist­ing man­age­ment struc­ture as “heavy,” with 34 ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions cost­ing over $70 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day con­tact­ed WASA chair­man Roshan Bab­wah to con­firm the salary fig­ures and clar­i­fy the em­ploy­ment sta­tus of those ap­point­ed. Ques­tions were al­so raised about whether any cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis had been done to as­sess the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the new lead­er­ship struc­ture. Up to press time, no re­sponse was re­ceived.


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