Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Se­nior Re­porter

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) Kelvin Ro­main has been told that an African na­tion­al has been se­lect­ed as the au­thor­i­ty’s new CEO.

Ro­main, who has been act­ing in the po­si­tion since 2022, told Guardian Me­dia he was aware that a na­tion­al of Ghana had been se­lect­ed for the po­si­tion.

“I was aware that a for­eign­er from Africa was se­lect­ed as the new CEO as per the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to trans­form WASA in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion that can sus­tain it­self and pro­vide the lev­el of ser­vice re­quired to sat­is­fy all its cus­tomers,” he said.

“This se­lec­tion was fol­low­ing a process where we saw the po­si­tion ad­ver­tised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said Ro­main was among sev­er­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers be­ing re­placed at WASA in the com­ing weeks.
He went fur­ther to con­firm that the po­si­tion of CEO will be filled by a non-na­tion­al, as they need­ed some­one with a proven track record of trans­form­ing a wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny and not many peo­ple in T&T have that ex­pe­ri­ence.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les in­di­cat­ed that Ro­main will ei­ther re­vert to his sub­stan­tive po­si­tion or be re­as­signed to an­oth­er lead­er­ship role with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion once the new CEO is named.

Ro­main has not com­ment­ed on whether he plans to stay with the com­pa­ny.
He was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of Sher­land Shep­pard.

When Gon­za­les as­sumed the role of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter in 2020, he said WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion would be his pri­or­i­ty and ex­pressed con­cern about its per­for­mance and in­abil­i­ty to ser­vice the coun­try for more than 20 years.

In March, the min­is­ter re­vealed that WASA is aim­ing to re­duce be­tween 170 to more than 200 man­age­ment po­si­tions. He again not­ed on Tues­day that the lead­er­ship struc­ture is “too large and is im­ped­ing the work of the au­thor­i­ty.”

So far, nine new man­agers have been hired at WASA and are ex­pect­ed to be­gin du­ties soon while the com­pa­ny looks to em­ploy 34 deputy man­agers, which Gon­za­les said will in­clude in­ter­nal pro­mo­tions.

An as­sur­ance was al­so giv­en to non-man­age­r­i­al staff that there would be no cuts at the low­er lev­el.

In 2022, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans to re­struc­ture the cash-strapped WASA to make it an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive state en­ti­ty.

Gon­za­les had said then that the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pack­age would first tar­get 426 man­agers.

“We are seek­ing to re­duce that by about 50 or 40 per cent. We can­not dri­ve this re­struc­tur­ing straight down to the ground. You need to have lead­er­ship in place to fil­ter down be­cause the lead­er­ship of that au­thor­i­ty would now have to en­gage in dis­cus­sions and con­sul­ta­tions with the unions.”

The man­agers to be axed were to have the op­tion of ap­ply­ing for po­si­tions ad­ver­tised by WASA, the min­is­ter had said at that time.

In 1999, the Cab­i­net ap­proved four lev­els of man­age­r­i­al staff con­sist­ing of 172 em­ploy­ees and an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of 1,723 staff mem­bers.

How­ev­er, WASA’s pay­roll sub­se­quent­ly in­creased to 4,828 em­ploy­ees, con­sist­ing of 3,043 month­ly paid and 1,785 dai­ly paid work­ers.

This in­clud­ed em­ploy­ees with the des­ig­na­tion of man­ag­er who su­per­vised no one or just one or two staff mem­bers un­der their con­trol.

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