SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI and AN­NA-LISA PAUL

A 2016 in­ter­nal au­dit in­to a for­mer se­nior man­ag­er at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has un­earthed nu­mer­ous in­ci­dents of mis­con­duct which di­rect­ly re­sult­ed in the wa­ter com­pa­ny haem­or­rhag­ing mil­lions in salaries and over­time.

In­tent on se­cur­ing some re­dress for the past wrongs, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the find­ings con­tained in the 74-page re­port which was pre­sent­ed to then act­ing CEO Alan Poon King; Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Dion Ab­dool; and Head, Le­gal Ser­vices Paula Maria For­tune - will now be passed to the TTPS for in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion.

The re­port is al­so ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and WASA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy.

The au­dit re­port, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, was led by act­ing man­ag­er of Op­er­a­tional Au­dit, Leah Gue­vara and Sonya Wright, act­ing Au­dit Of­fi­cer II.

A to­tal of sev­en al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct were lev­elled against the for­mer man­ag­er.

Among them was an al­le­ga­tion that the for­mer man­ag­er failed to fol­low and/or es­tab­lish prac­tices for the re­cruit­ment and re-hir­ing of per­son­nel, “at a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial cost and bur­den on the au­thor­i­ty, and/or the en­gage­ment of dai­ly paid work­ers in 2014 and 2015 with­out req­ui­site cre­den­tials.”

An­oth­er al­le­ga­tion was that dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, the for­mer man­ag­er act­ed in breach of WASA’s man­date to re­duce staff pur­suant to a Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion Pack­age (VSEP) loan agree­ment with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), and that he al­so mis­led the man­age­ment, board and min­istry with re­spect to man­pow­er lev­els with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

Re­gard­ing this al­le­ga­tion, the re­port found that cer­tain em­ploy­ee files did not con­tain key doc­u­ments such as up­dat­ed em­ploy­ment con­tracts, po­lice cer­tifi­cates of good char­ac­ter, a WASA ap­pli­ca­tion form, any form of na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, an as­sump­tion of du­ty form, a let­ter of ap­point­ment, or a hu­man re­sources re­cruit­ment check list.

Yet an­oth­er al­le­ga­tion claimed there was al­so a lack of trans­paren­cy in the se­lec­tion cri­te­ria of staff in some ar­eas, as 342 peo­ple who did not pos­sess the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions, knowl­edge, skills or ex­pe­ri­ence had been ap­point­ed in an in­ter­im arrange­ment with­in the Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion.

These ap­point­ments saw the over­all salary costs of the Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion in­crease from $130,168,706.82 to $157,824,269.28.

The au­dit was un­der­tak­en by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing a 2012 re­port com­piled by WASA, which showed that in an at­tempt to get fund­ing from the IDB - one con­di­tion­al­i­ty was that the au­thor­i­ty un­der­took an ur­gent staff ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise which was com­plet­ed by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) dur­ing their tenure.

At the time, WASA was tasked to get 2,500 of its 5,000 em­ploy­ees out of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Of this fig­ure, –1,000 em­ploy­ees ac­cept­ed VSEP which cost tax­pay­ers $360 mil­lion.

By 2015, how­ev­er, WASA’s work­force had bal­looned to its orig­i­nal fig­ure of 5,000, which trig­gered WASA to un­der­take the au­dit to find out what had led to the re­hir­ing process.

1,474 new hires

A re­view of the Hu­man Re­source In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (HRIS) in the au­dit showed that “a to­tal of 1,474 new hires” were made by WASA dur­ing 2014/2015 by the se­nior man­ag­er.

This com­prised 367 month­ly paid work­ers with 1,107 be­ing dai­ly paid, of which 640 were said to be lo­cal labour­ers.

From March 2012, the vari­ance in man­pow­er lev­els jumped from 428 to 1,763 by Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The au­dit found that the man­ag­er failed to re­port “the ac­tu­al num­ber of new re­cruits and al­so mis­rep­re­sent­ed the man­pow­er lev­els in his re­ports to the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers and Hu­man Re­sources Com­mit­tee by re­peat­ed­ly un­der­stat­ing the fig­ures be­low the ac­tu­al num­ber.”

Man­ag­er re­port­ed in­ac­cu­rate man­pow­er lev­els to the Board.

The au­dit found that in 2015, the man­ag­er “know­ing­ly re­port­ed in­ac­cu­rate man­pow­er lev­els in the VSEP 2012/2014 clo­sure re­port.”

He re­port­ed, “that the au­thor­i­ty’s pre-VSEP staffing lev­el of 4,386 de­clined by 961 em­ploy­ees as a re­sult of per­sons util­is­ing VESP, in­fer­ring to­tal man­pow­er lev­els at the end of Au­gust 2014 to be 3,425. This did not re­flect the ac­tu­al man­pow­er lev­els on the HRIS data­base of 4,644.”

“These staff lev­els con­tin­ued to in­crease over time to 4,711 in Jan­u­ary 2015, the date the VSEP clo­sure re­port was pre­sent­ed and to 5,114 by the time he pro­ceed­ed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave in No­vem­ber 2015.”

It al­so re­vealed there was no ap­proved doc­u­ment­ed guid­ance es­tab­lished and utilised for the hire of lo­cal labour.

In spite of the au­thor­i­ty’s ef­fort to re­duce staff via the VSEP, the man­ag­er “signed and ap­proved req­ui­si­tions for the hire of at least 137 out of 640 lo­cal labour­ers hired in 2014/2015.”

Work­ers with­out ID cards re­cruit­ed

A re­view of 13 lo­cal labour files showed that “five per­sons were re­cruit­ed, al­though they on­ly pos­sessed ID cards.”

This is con­trary to WASA’s Re­cruit­ment and Se­lec­tion Pol­i­cy-Sec­tion 7.7 which re­quires a can­di­date to present sev­en forms of doc­u­ments rang­ing from- birth cer­tifi­cate, na­tion­al IDs, two tes­ti­mo­ni­als, aca­d­e­m­ic cer­tifi­cates, NIS and BIR num­bers, cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter and dri­ver’s per­mit if need­ed.

A re­view of the HRIS data­base al­so in­di­cat­ed that 455 of the 640 lo­cal labour­ers were hired in 2015, with 185 in 2014.

“To­tal staff costs in­clud­ing over­time and retroac­tive pay­ments for the (2011 to 2013 agree­ments) for these ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ees from the date of hire to Ju­ly 2016, amount­ed to $64,317,592.34.”

Salaries in­creased by $27 mil­lion fol­low­ing the VSEP ex­er­cise

The au­dit stat­ed that the “tac­tics em­ployed” by the man­ag­er “in craft­ing an arrange­ment pend­ing the ap­proval of the pro­posed op­er­a­tions struc­ture cre­at­ed loop­holes that re­sult­ed in an ar­bi­trary up­grade of staff and in­creased salary cost in sums ex­ceed­ing $27,655,562.47 dur­ing the last two years. If con­tin­ued, this has the po­ten­tial to in­cur an ad­di­tion­al month­ly fi­nan­cial bur­den of $1,379, 281.85 which can no longer be sus­tained,” the au­dit stat­ed.

This led to an in­creased fi­nan­cial bur­den on WASA.

Fol­low­ing the find­ings, the au­dit rec­om­mend­ed dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion be con­sid­ered against the se­nior man­ag­er for non-com­pli­ance with or­gan­i­sa­tion­al poli­cies/guide­lines.

The man­ag­er was al­so found to be in breach of the au­thor­i­ty’s man­date to re­duce staff based on the IDB loan agree­ment.

The au­dit al­so dis­cov­ered the man­ag­er “au­tho­rised ex­ces­sive and ad­di­tion­al com­mut­ed over­time (COT) hours to spe­cif­ic em­ploy­ees on the spe­cial in­ter­im arrange­ment, where up to 60 hours in ex­cess of the staff mem­bers’ en­ti­tle­ment was ap­proved, re­sult­ing in an in­crease in month­ly staff costs of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $153,624.57 com­menc­ing from Jan­u­ary 2013 to vary­ing dates in 2016.”

Ex­ces­sive over­time paid to unions of­fi­cials

The au­dit al­so dis­cov­ered the man­ag­er al­so retroac­tive­ly ap­proved the pay­ments of ad­di­tion­al COT hours and spe­cial project al­lowances to six mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) WASA sec­tion be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2013, to De­cem­ber 31, 2015.

“These al­lowances are in ex­cess of those pro­vid­ed to em­ploy­ees of sim­i­lar ranges and job de­scrip­tion and has re­sult­ed in an in­creased month­ly fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment to the Au­thor­i­ty of $31,135.61,” the au­dit stat­ed.

From Jan­u­ary 2013 to De­cem­ber 2015, the ex­cess al­lowance to­talled $947,307.03

Fur­ther­more, this al­lowance con­tin­ued be­yond De­cem­ber 2015 to Ju­ly 2016, to­talling $195,302.12.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the man­ag­er al­so au­tho­rised the pay­ment of over­time for­gone by the union of­fi­cials of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) WASA sec­tion from Jan­u­ary 2011 to De­cem­ber 2014, with­out seek­ing ap­proval from the Board and Hu­man Re­source Com­mit­tee.

These pay­ments amount­ed to $726,718.

The au­dit stat­ed that there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port that the man­ag­er had per­formed due dili­gence checks to en­sure the ac­cu­ra­cy and le­git­i­ma­cy of the re­quest­ed amount to be re­mit­ted to these of­fi­cials.

It fur­ther re­vealed the man­ag­er au­tho­rised pay­ments of over­time fore­gone and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing al­lowances to ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the NUGFW WASA Sec­tion to­talling $1,426,718 with­out seek­ing ap­provals from the CEO, Board and Hu­man Re­source Com­mit­tee.

The man­ag­er was al­so al­leged to have used his of­fice to ap­prove the al­lo­ca­tion of a leased mo­tor care ve­hi­cle in ad­di­tion to the re­ceipt of trav­el­ling al­lowances to three oth­er man­agers.

In ad­di­tion, the au­dit stat­ed that the cur­rent op­er­at­ing staff (num­bers and costs) of the en­tire Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion needs to be re­viewed and a de­ter­mi­na­tion of ac­tion to be tak­en against the rel­e­vant man­age­ment where ap­proved process­es have not been fol­lowed and/or ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties are iden­ti­fied.

No ad­her­ence to ten­der process

The man­ag­er was al­so ac­cused of not ad­her­ing to the au­thor­i­ty’s pro­cure­ment and ten­der­ing process in se­lect­ing a group life plan with an in­sur­ance firm in 2015.

“Doc­u­men­ta­tion re­ceived from the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion has re­vealed that $2,495,923.84 and $1,123,888.58 has been emit­ted to the in­sur­ance firm (named called) for the pe­ri­od June 2015 to Ju­ly 2016 which rep­re­sents em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee’s con­tri­bu­tions re­spec­tive­ly,” the au­dit stat­ed.

The over­all con­clu­sion by the in­ter­nal au­dit was with the ex­cep­tion of grant­i­ng ap­proval for the re­ceipt of both trav­el­ling al­lowances and leased mo­tor ve­hi­cles by mem­bers of staff, “the ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient­ly sup­ports the al­le­ga­tions pre­sent­ed against” the man­ag­er.

BOX

Gon­za­les: WASA a feed­ing fren­zy.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les main­tained that a sig­nif­i­cant part of the prob­lem at WASA is its man­age­ment who are not held to ac­count.

He con­firmed the au­dit will be re­ferred to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith along with a copy to WASA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy for le­gal ad­vice “to see what ac­tion could be tak­en against the man­ag­er.”

An in­censed Gon­za­les said, “This is mis­man­age­ment at the high­est lev­el. To me, it is or­gan­ised chaos and mis­man­age­ment. It was a feed­ing fren­zy by peo­ple whose ob­jec­tive was not to pro­vide wa­ter to the peo­ple of this coun­try but to serve their own self­ish in­ter­ests and needs.”

Gon­za­les said the au­dit has been con­sis­tent with the find­ings of the re­port of the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee in­to the op­er­a­tions of WASA.

“That is the scan­dalous state of af­fairs. We got a loan from the IDB to re­duce WASA’s staff and the monies were lit­er­al­ly mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed. The time has come for these things to be brought to an end.”

Gon­za­les said to his shock, the same staff mem­bers who ac­cept­ed the VSEP pack­age were re­hired un­der the same job de­scrip­tion but for high­er salaries.

Some of the VSEP work­ers were al­so re­tained as con­trac­tors.

“And they were not trained peo­ple...they were not qual­i­fied. That is the rea­son why we have sub­stan­dard work go­ing on all over the coun­try where leak­ing pipelines are per­pet­u­al­ly re­paired and they are not prop­er­ly done.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pay the IDB for the loan they grant­ed WASA.

Re­gard­ing WASA’s soar­ing staff lev­els, Gon­za­les said “that is the rea­son why the re­struc­tur­ing process is tak­ing place. We now have to cor­rect the wrongs that took place be­tween 2012 to 2015.”

The man­ag­er, Gon­za­les said was re­moved from WASA in 2009 and brought back in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion in 2012 by the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion and did what he want­ed.

Guardian Me­dia was able to con­firm the man­ag­er was sus­pend­ed a few years ago al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing the Board, the IDB, and the min­istry as to WASA’s staffing lev­els aris­ing out of the VSEP pro­gramme.

The man­ag­er was sent on paid ad­min­is­tra­tive leave un­til his sus­pen­sion one year lat­er.

“He act­ed against the in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty,” Gon­za­les said.