The planned re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), which was set to see the re­moval of hun­dreds of man­agers and them be­ing re­placed by 34 se­nior per­sons, has of­fi­cial­ly been scrapped.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the an­nounce­ment at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, where she con­firmed Cab­i­net had re­scind­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­struc­tur­ing plan.

In seal­ing the deal, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ripped up the ex­ist­ing trans­for­ma­tion pol­i­cy be­fore her Cab­i­net col­leagues and those on hand.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “To­day, the Cab­i­net re­scind­ed the pre­vi­ous cab­i­net de­ci­sion of the PNM to bru­talise, to de­monise and at­tack WASA work­ers, WASA man­age­ment and the man­date of WASA.”

In 2022, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced WASA was re­duc­ing its 426 man­age­ment po­si­tions by 50 per cent. He al­so an­nounced plans for a new ex­ec­u­tive team—po­si­tions that have since been filled. She al­so said ne­go­ti­a­tions with the unions will take place for re­struc­tur­ing of the bar­gain­ing units.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­plained that the move will save the coun­try ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

“The WASA’s core func­tion is to in­crease wa­ter pro­duc­tion and dis­trib­ute through­out the coun­try. To­day, we will an­nounce and can an­nounce and have ap­proved that the changes to the man­age­ment of WASA re­sult in sav­ings of about $30 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, at least $30 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, and that then we can use to go in­to crit­i­cal ar­eas of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” the PM said.

She al­so called on WASA work­ers to co­op­er­ate fol­low­ing her de­ci­sion.

“To­day, I ask of you in WASA that you do the right thing. Do your part to make sure that WASA ful­fils its man­date to de­liv­er wa­ter for all. You know they say one hand doesn’t clap. We need two. One hand doesn’t clap. But you know what? One hand can slap. So, let’s put the two to­geth­er and clap. Let’s work to­geth­er. I call on the WASA work­ers, as we give you what you want­ed, this is what you asked for.

“We have ho­n­oured our promise and we ask you now, let’s put all our hands to­geth­er, all hands on the wheel, and de­liv­er wa­ter for all.”

Re­as­sur­ing WASA work­ers that there will be no mass job cuts, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath fur­ther ex­plained that Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion on­ly af­fects 34 top se­nior man­agers—not in­clud­ing WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, an at­tempt to re­lieve the “top-heavy lay­ers” at WASA, ac­cord­ing to him.

Padarath said the new man­age­ment struc­ture will in­clude a CEO, so Hal­l­i­day’s job is safe for now.

Hal­l­i­day was on­ly ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber last year.

Padarath said, “The de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net to­day on­ly af­fects 34 po­si­tions of top se­nior man­agers that was brought in un­der the trans­for­ma­tion process. So, you’re look­ing at top se­nior man­agers with salaries bal­loon­ing over $100,000 with perks. It’s a top-heavy lay­er of ex­ec­u­tive man­agers that would have been brought in un­der Min­is­ter Gon­za­les.

“Many of those 34 were in sub­stan­tive po­si­tions be­fore and then came on to con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments. So, there­fore, there will be a vari­a­tion in terms of whether or not who among those 34 will go back to sub­stan­tive po­si­tions. But, there will be no mass of em­ploy­ees go­ing home at WASA. Ac­tu­al­ly, what the Prime Min­is­ter has done to­day is se­cure the jobs of over 5,000 WASA work­ers that were in lim­bo be­cause of that fear of the trans­for­ma­tion process and the plan that was on its way to the RIC (Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion) to de­ter­mine the new wa­ter rate. All of that has been now scrapped.”

Padarath said WASA will now have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to its em­ploy­ees.

He added, “One of the ar­eas that we crit­i­cise the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion about is that they did not con­tem­plate al­ter­na­tives in terms of their man­age­ment style that they pro­ject­ed and in terms of wa­ter pro­duc­tion and wa­ter de­liv­ery. So, what we want to an­nounce to­day is that there will be a more peo­ple-cen­tred ap­proach, par­tic­u­lar­ly with WASA em­ploy­ees … We are en­sur­ing that there’s a more struc­tured and a more co­he­sive man­age­ment style com­ing out of WASA, where you have a small­er core team that is able to achieve the man­date, which is wa­ter for all.”

He said Gov­ern­ment will al­so be look­ing at in­fra­struc­tur­al projects and al­ter­na­tive man­age­ment styles.

In the com­ing weeks, Padarath added that a lot of “scan­dalous rev­e­la­tions” about spend­ing at WASA will be ad­dressed.

Ad­dress­ing where the funds will come to pay WASA work­ers, he said “Cut­ting out the waste, mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and put the mon­ey in the hands of work­ers, as op­posed to the big boys and big girls who got these cushy jobs in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

At­tempts to con­tact Hal­l­i­day were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to sev­er­al se­nior WASA mem­bers.

One of them said the news was not shock­ing, as WASA work­ers had faced job un­cer­tain­ty for years.

“WASA would have gone through emo­tion­al trau­ma and that trau­ma is un­cer­tain­ty through­out the years be­cause of changes in gov­ern­ment. WASA is a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball at the end of the day. Each gov­ern­ment us­es WASA for their own ben­e­fit and that’s why WASA is in the place it is in,” the em­ploy­ee, who did not want to be named, said.

“I’m not say­ing WASA is the best but we can’t make WASA look bad all the time and you de­pen­dent on the gov­ern­ment for two-thirds of op­er­a­tional costs. The gov­ern­ment will have a say, so what­ev­er the gov­ern­ment says goes... The prob­lem with WASA is com­pli­ance.”