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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Lewis returns to WASA as management team nears completion

by

Kejan Haynes
22 days ago
20250707
FILE: Ellen Lewis

FILE: Ellen Lewis

Abraham Diaz

The fi­nal pieces of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture are falling in­to place, with Guardian Me­dia con­firm­ing that Ellen Lewis will re­turn to the util­i­ty com­pa­ny as Di­rec­tor of Cus­tomer Care.

“I can now con­firm I’m tak­ing up an of­fer at WASA ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 7,” Lewis said yes­ter­day. “I’ll be co­or­di­nat­ing the af­fairs of the di­vi­sion in an in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ty.”

Guardian Me­dia has al­so seen the in­ter­nal an­nounce­ment cir­cu­lat­ed to staff, in which act­ing CEO Jee­van Joseph wel­comed Lewis back to the or­gan­i­sa­tion as part of the “WASA Evo­lu­tion Team.”

Joseph said Lewis brings “ex­ten­sive ex­per­tise in strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, cri­sis man­age­ment, and cus­tomer-cen­tric lead­er­ship,” hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly held re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cus­tomer ser­vice and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion at WASA. Her re­turn, he added, is aimed at en­hanc­ing cus­tomer care de­liv­ery and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Lewis, who re­signed last week from her role as man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Ed­u­ca­tion at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, was well known to the me­dia over the years dur­ing her time in the TTPS’ Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment as well. 

Her ap­point­ment now makes it 13 peo­ple placed in se­nior ex­ec­u­tive roles at WASA, ex­clud­ing the six oth­ers as re­gion­al or project heads.

The first wave of re­place­ments was an­nounced via in­ter­nal email on June 25 af­ter the CEO, Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and the ex­ec­u­tive team were dis­missed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The new struc­ture was ap­proved by WASA’s Board of Com­mis­sion­ers. A sec­ond in­ter­nal doc­u­ment out­lined pro­posed salary pack­ages, in­clud­ing a com­pen­sa­tion of $108,000 a month af­ter al­lowances for act­ing CEO Joseph.

Joseph was al­so giv­en in­ter­im over­sight of the Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion, while Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh, act­ing Di­rec­tor of Waste­water Ser­vices, was tapped to over­see Cus­tomer Care “un­til the re­spec­tive ap­point­ments are made.” Lewis had been tipped for the role at the time, but no con­fir­ma­tion was giv­en.

Joseph con­firmed last Mon­day that Man­noo Bridglal was sub­se­quent­ly ap­point­ed Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions for a three-month term via con­sul­tan­cy.

The ap­point­ments have come amid on­go­ing pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal scruti­ny, af­ter nine mem­bers of the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive were dis­missed just months af­ter be­ing hired to over­see util­i­ty re­form. Joseph has said all cur­rent di­rec­tor posts will be ad­ver­tised be­fore any per­ma­nent ap­point­ments are made.

The list of se­nior ex­ec­u­tives now in­cludes:

Jee­van Joseph – Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (Ag)

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)

Ellen Lewis – Di­rec­tor, Cus­tomer Care (Ag)

Man­noo Bridglal, - Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions (on three months con­tract)

Along­side these se­nior roles,  oth­er ex­ec­u­tives were al­so as­signed as re­gion­al and project heads. They are:

Glason Gu­rusarans­ingh – Head, North East Re­gion

Fa­reed Ali – Head, North West Re­gion

Ryan Bachu – Head, Cen­tral Re­gion

Maria John – Head, South West Re­gion

Ren­ny Bharath – Head, Project Im­ple­men­ta­tion

Ronald Ramkalawan – Head, Waste­water Projects


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