KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Kelvin Ro­main, is among sev­er­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to be re­placed in the com­ing weeks.

This was con­firmed by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day, as he said WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion process is mov­ing full steam ahead. Gon­za­les al­so re­vealed that Ro­main’s re­place­ment will not be a na­tion­al of T&T.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (MPU) head of­fice in Port-of- Spain, Gon­za­les said the au­thor­i­ty need­ed some­one with a proven track record of trans­form­ing a wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny, but not many peo­ple in T&T have that ex­pe­ri­ence.

A to­tal of nine new man­agers have been hired at WASA thus far and will come on board soon. He al­so as­sured all non-man­age­r­i­al work­ers that there would not be any more job cuts at the low­er lev­el just yet.

Gon­za­les said, “We are fo­cus­ing right now on the lead­er­ship struc­ture be­cause all the re­ports would have in­di­cat­ed that it is too cum­ber­some. It is too large, and that is im­ped­ing the work of the au­thor­i­ty, so the fo­cus on this part of the trans­for­ma­tion is re­struc­tur­ing the lead­er­ship of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“The po­si­tions were be­ing ad­ver­tised with­in WASA, lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. All of the per­sons who would have ap­plied for jobs com­pet­ed with very ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple, be­cause re­mem­ber, it is a trans­for­ma­tion, and very few peo­ple have ex­pe­ri­ence in trans­form­ing and en­gag­ing in that wide-scale trans­for­ma­tion of a wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny.”

Gon­za­les al­so said that in ad­di­tion to the nine new man­agers, WASA will soon be seek­ing to em­ploy 34 deputy man­agers, which will in­clude in­ter­nal pro­mo­tions.

At present, in ad­di­tion to Ro­main, WASA’s ex­ec­u­tives in­clude act­ing di­rec­tor, Cus­tomer Care Natasha An­drews; act­ing di­rec­tor, Op­er­a­tions Shaira Ali; act­ing di­rec­tor, Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Al­li­son El­cock; act­ing di­rec­tor, Hu­man Re­sources Marielle Hi­laire; act­ing di­rec­tor, Fi­nance Giselle Spence; act­ing head waste­water projects Daren Gazee; and act­ing head wa­ter projects Shawn Sa­landy.