SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

“A scan­dalous and shame­ful state of af­fairs!”

This was Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ re­ac­tion to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) rack­ing up a $468.3 mil­lion over­time bill from 2016 to 2020.

The ex­or­bi­tant bill was of grave con­cern to a re­cent­ly formed Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the op­er­a­tions of WASA.

The dis­turb­ing in­for­ma­tion was con­tained in a de­tailed re­port which the com­mit­tee, chaired by Gon­za­les, sub­mit­ted to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to trans­form cash-strapped WASA.

The re­port stat­ed in 2016, WASA com­menced sev­er­al cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives which had re­sult­ed in sav­ings of $64.7 mil­lion by the end of Sep­tem­ber 2019.

Among the ini­tia­tives they un­der­took was a re­duc­tion in bulk pur­chas­es, over­time from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a shift sys­tem and the ro­ta­tion of su­per­vi­sors, use of tech­nol­o­gy, lim­it­ing trav­el and re-ne­go­ti­a­tion of lease arrange­ments for ve­hi­cles and prop­er­ty.

The com­mit­tee, how­ev­er, point­ed out that “one ma­jor area in which man­age­ment con­trols are ur­gent­ly re­quired is the area of over­time and that over­time-re­lat­ed cost con­tributes to the au­thor­i­ty’s in­abil­i­ty to ful­fil its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions on a month­ly ba­sis.”

In May 2016, the re­port re­vealed that WASA formed an over­time man­age­ment com­mit­tee whose man­date was to analyse the his­toric da­ta of over­time lev­els and re­duce cost.

WASA has a staff com­ple­ment of 4,828 em­ploy­ees.

This num­ber does not in­clude 47 mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team and 80 staff re­lat­ed to var­i­ous pro­grammes and projects.

Staff costs (wages and salaries) rep­re­sent ap­prox­i­mate­ly 177 per cent of to­tal rev­enue and 45.6 per cent of to­tal op­er­at­ing costs.

The over­time com­mit­tee agreed that for the year 2017, “the over­time for month­ly paid staff (com­mut­ed) would be $25,471,365 while the over­time for dai­ly-rat­ed staff would be in the vicin­i­ty of $20,069,934,” the re­port stat­ed.

WASA’s overtime from 2016 to 2020

Roberto Codallo

“The ac­tu­al fig­ure for year 2017 as record­ed pre­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent out­turn than what was pro­posed with over­time for dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees reach­ing $39.2 mil­lion and com­ment­ed over­time record­ing a high of $51 mil­lion.”

The re­port fur­ther re­vealed that “in both cas­es, the ac­tu­al was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 per cent more than pro­ject­ed.”

Be­tween 2016 and 2020, the re­port showed that WASA “ex­pend­ed $207,469,234 on over­time for its dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees and $260,928,512 (com­ment­ed) for its month­ly paid staff, for a to­tal of $468,397,746 mil­lion or an over­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $94 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.”

Re­spond­ing to the over­time, Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments be­tween WASA and the unions recog­nised that be­tween the hours of 11 am and 1 pm, WASA em­ploy­ees have to go back to their base to have lunch.

The crew may re­turn to con­tin­ue the job.

“And if they work dur­ing lunch hour then you have to pay a spe­cial al­lowance for that.”

He said one ought not to have signed col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments re­gard­ing “an or­gan­i­sa­tion whose op­er­a­tions is 24 hours and the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is ne­go­ti­at­ed on an 8 am to 4 pm ba­sis. It is like a con­trived arrange­ment to milk the state mon­ey.”

He said this was noth­ing short of a “scan­dal.”

Gon­za­les ques­tioned why there isn’t a shift sys­tem.

“Imag­ine ex­ec­u­tives in WASA al­so ne­go­ti­at­ed their own con­tract and they are get­ting bonus­es. How the peo­ple in this coun­try would feel to know that ex­ec­u­tives in WASA com­pen­sat­ing them­selves with bonus­es when they are not get­ting wa­ter in their taps? That is just crazy.”

Gon­za­les said these high-lev­el staff who are paid “mil­lions in salaries” year­ly al­so re­ceived $17 mil­lion in bonus­es and $7 mil­lion in gra­tu­ity for the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2020.

“You can­not turn around an or­gan­i­sa­tion if you do not deal with those in­sti­tu­tion­al dys­func­tions. Be­cause those things all con­trive to en­sure that the monies that go in­to WASA are not go­ing to­wards en­sur­ing that peo­ple get wa­ter. They are go­ing to­wards pay­ing hefty salaries, bonus­es, al­lowances and pay­ing con­trac­tors and wa­ter trucks.”

He said WASA will on­ly get val­ue for mon­ey when peo­ple start get­ting wa­ter.

“When you see all these monies be­ing spent in over­time and pay­ment of bonus­es and al­lowances and ve­hi­cles for peo­ple the lev­els of ser­vice con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate, then the coun­try is be­ing robbed.”

The re­port cit­ed that even though the 1999 Cab­i­net ap­proved struc­ture calls for four lev­els of lead­er­ship and a com­ple­ment of 172 em­ploy­ees, WASA’s cur­rent top man­age­ment struc­ture in­cludes eight di­rec­tors, 19 ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment heads, 32 ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment -se­nior man­agers, 88 de­part­men­tal man­agers, 25 as­sis­tant man­agers, 35 sec­tion man­agers, 23 unit man­agers and 196 su­per­vi­sors, which to­talled 426 man­agers.

While this rep­re­sent­ed 248 per cent in ex­cess of the ap­proved struc­ture, the sub-com­mit­tee point­ed out that WASA’s lead­er­ship had been “ex­ceed­ing­ly top-heavy.”

File picture: WASA workmen at the scene of the ruptured water main at Sealots, Port-of-Spain.

KERWIN PIERRE

The sub-com­mit­tee al­so touched on the is­sue of “rene­go­ti­a­tions of lease arrange­ments for ve­hi­cles.”

The re­port stat­ed that fol­low­ing gov­ern­ment’s move to slash ex­pen­di­ture at min­istries and agen­cies by sev­en per cent in 2016, WASA took steps to re­turn 100 leased ve­hi­cles to their sup­pli­ers, leav­ing a fleet of 301 ve­hi­cles.

A break­down of the ve­hi­cle rentals from 2016 to 2020 showed that WASA spent $142,828,589.

“The da­ta al­so record an uptick since for the year 2018 re­sult­ing in a 38.3 per cent in­crease in rental cost be­tween 2018 and 2020 on ac­count of in­creased rental costs for pick-ups and three-ton trucks,” the re­port stat­ed.

17 al­lowances avail­able to staff

The re­port re­vealed that WASA main­tains a full range of ben­e­fits for all its em­ploy­ees, in some cas­es above and be­yond what ex­ists in oth­er en­ti­ties.

“The cost of its col­lec­tive agree­ment is $1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly. The wage bill rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of the util­i­ties op­er­at­ing cost with over­time costs rep­re­sent­ing be­tween 15 to 18 of the to­tal an­nu­al wage bill.”

In the case of dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees, Sat­ur­days and Sun­day at­tract dou­ble and triple-time pay­ments.

The high­est util­i­sa­tion of dai­ly paid work­ers is in the Op­er­a­tions di­vi­sion which is at the heart of the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions.

WASA’s man­age­ment is sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pro­mised since it is re­quired to man­age ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 al­lowances for the en­tire em­ploy­ee pop­u­la­tion.

The al­lowances in­clude: haz­ard, dri­ving, laun­dry, shift, sep­a­ra­tion, sub­sis­tence, rur­al work­ers (com­pa­ny trans­port), trans­fer, ve­hi­cle re­spon­si­bil­i­ty over lunch (over­time), stand­by, sew­er main­te­nance work­er al­lowance, pre­mi­ums, uni­form, pro­tec­tive cloth­ing and/or gear, chem­i­cal han­dling, depth pre­mi­um, ab­nor­mal haz­ards.

“Of these, ten re­late to month­ly-paid em­ploy­ees, 17 are re­lat­ed to hourly-rat­ed work­ers and sev­en are pre­mi­um-re­lat­ed al­lowances.”

In the case of se­cu­ri­ty staff, nine al­lowances ap­ply.

The wide range of al­lowances in­clude, over­times, on-call, and com­ment­ed over­time.

In an en­vi­ron­ment of lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources, the re­port stressed that this is un­sus­tain­able.