The Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day fired Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day in a ma­jor up­per-man­age­ment shake-up at the au­thor­i­ty.

New­ly in­stalled chair­man Roshan Bab­wah con­firmed the move, as he re­vealed that Hal­l­i­day was among 10 top-lev­el ex­ec­u­tives whose po­si­tions were ter­mi­nat­ed. The oth­er ex­ec­u­tives were hired to deal with the con­tentious trans­for­ma­tion plan im­ple­ment­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, which has been re­scind­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, they were not named.

The an­nounce­ment comes just two days af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath pub­licly de­scribed Hal­l­i­day as “a failed CEO” dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day, Bab­wah said Hal­l­i­day was dis­missed with “im­me­di­ate ef­fect.”

“At the board meet­ing, we im­ple­ment­ed the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net with re­spect to the trans­for­ma­tion plan at WASA. We re­scind­ed that and re­vert­ed to the pre­vi­ous struc­ture. What we did on­ly im­pact­ed 10 peo­ple. All per­sons who were em­ployed at WASA have re­vert­ed back to their sub­stan­tive po­si­tion; there­fore, there was no job loss to any­one pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed at WASA. We have end­ed the ser­vice of the CEO.”

Jee­van Joseph was ap­point­ed as act­ing WASA CEO and now takes over from Hal­l­i­day.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, WASA said Joseph brings over two decades of ex­ten­sive tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al ex­per­tise in the util­i­ties sec­tor with a dis­tin­guished ca­reer at the util­i­ty.

“His ap­point­ment un­der­scores the board’s com­mit­ment to re­defin­ing the path for­ward for the au­thor­i­ty, fo­cused on achiev­ing eq­ui­ty in the sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pipe-borne wa­ter across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Joseph stat­ed, “My fo­cus will be on col­lab­o­rat­ing with stake­hold­ers, lever­ag­ing in­no­va­tion, and en­sur­ing that every­body in every com­mu­ni­ty re­ceives fair and sus­tain­able ac­cess to pipe-borne wa­ter. To­geth­er, we will build a stronger, more re­spon­sive WASA.”

Hal­l­i­day was hired last No­vem­ber by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to lead WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion plan.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that as part of his em­ploy­ment pack­age, Hal­l­i­day was earn­ing over $100,000 per month.

Bab­wah said there was no im­me­di­ate push­back from Hal­l­i­day to the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment.

“I had a meet­ing with Mr Hal­l­i­day, it was a very cor­dial meet­ing,” he said.

Bab­wah al­so said WASA’s board stood ready to de­fend against any po­ten­tial le­gal chal­lenges in the fu­ture.

“That is what the courts are there for, that in case there are any dis­putes or any mat­ters in terms of con­tracts or what­ev­er, have you. I am ex­pect­ing there may or may not be chal­lenges to the de­ci­sion of the au­thor­i­ty, but we are stand­ing by our de­ci­sion,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia has been un­able to ver­i­fy the iden­ti­ties of the oth­er peo­ple linked to the trans­for­ma­tion plan who were dis­missed. How­ev­er, the com­po­si­tion of the as­sis­tant di­rec­tors who as­sumed du­ties on De­cem­ber 1, 2024, af­ter Hal­l­i­day was ap­point­ed, in­clud­ed:

Kar­lene Am­mon - Di­rec­tor, Cor­po­rate Fi­nance

Neil Der­rick - Di­rec­tor, Peo­ple, Trans­for­ma­tion and Cen­tral Ser­vices

Al­isha Ro­mano - Di­rec­tor, Tech­nol­o­gy, Fu­ture Sys­tems and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty

Shaira Ali - Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (North East)

Kelvin Ro­main - Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (North West)

Sharon Bai­ley - Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (Cen­tral)

Anand Jag­ger­nath - Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (South)

Bri­an Williams - Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (To­ba­go)

Pe­ter Ganesh - Di­rec­tor, Project Man­age­ment Of­fice

Dion Ab­dool - Le­gal and Gen­er­al Coun­sel/Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary, and;

Ria Chrysos­tom-Ryan - Chief In­ter­nal Au­di­tor

Up­on be­ing elect­ed in­to of­fice, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment im­me­di­ate­ly moved to scrap the trans­for­ma­tion plan.

The plan aimed to ad­dress the long-stand­ing is­sues of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, poor ser­vice de­liv­ery, and fi­nan­cial con­straints with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the House on Mon­day, Padarath claimed that the plan cost tax­pay­ers over $13.4 mil­lion to de­vel­op and threat­ened mas­sive job loss­es num­ber­ing 2,500.

Yes­ter­day, Padarath told Guardian Me­dia that the re­cent ac­tion was a step to­wards im­ple­ment­ing a “peo­ple-cen­tred” ap­proach, fo­cus­ing on a lean­er, more ef­fi­cient man­age­ment team and util­is­ing the IDB loan for in­fra­struc­ture projects.

“Those af­fect­ed by the re­scind­ing of the trans­for­ma­tion plan were not in the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­fore. Prop­er HR prac­tice will be fol­lowed. In the long and short of it, yes, we are bring­ing down in­to ef­fect the re­scind­ing of that trans­for­ma­tion plan.”

Via a state­ment last night, Padarath said vot­ers gave the UNC Gov­ern­ment a large man­date to man­i­fest promised changes. One of them, he said, was scrap­ping the WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan.

Not­ing Hal­l­i­day was in the po­si­tion for over six months, he said, “Last month when I met with the for­mer CEO, I in­quired about his per­spec­tive on the trans­for­ma­tion plan which he was brought in to over­see. His re­sponse was deeply alarm­ing, shock­ing and dis­turb­ing. Af­ter six months, Mr Hal­l­i­day told me in front of sev­er­al WASA em­ploy­ees that he had not yet seen the trans­for­ma­tion plan. I asked whether he had a copy and at that time the an­swer was NO.”

He added, “We’ve af­ford­ed Mr Hal­l­i­day due process, how­ev­er, we do not have faith and con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age WASA.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas, whose union rep­re­sents WASA work­ers, said her mem­ber­ship sup­port­ed the board’s ac­tion. She said she had al­ready been con­tact­ed by the act­ing CEO on the way for­ward.

“WASA pos­sess­es a work­force of high­ly qual­i­fied and com­pe­tent in­di­vid­u­als who are ea­ger to con­tribute to the en­hance­ment of ser­vice de­liv­ery and the pro­vi­sion of an im­proved wa­ter sup­ply to this coun­try,” Thomas, who cam­paigned with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress dur­ing the re­cent Gen­er­al Elec­tion, said.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with this Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, who has done an ex­cel­lent job in ex­pos­ing the ills of the PNM on WASA’s af­fairs.”