Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) says its new­ly re­vised ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture will slash se­nior man­age­ment costs by $39.1 mil­lion a year.

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, the now-aban­doned pro­pos­al for 2025 would have cre­at­ed 112 se­nior po­si­tions, in­clud­ing 37 ex­ec­u­tives and 75 de­part­ment heads.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that they’ve re­vert­ed to a “more ef­fi­cient” 2013-style mod­el, now made up of nine ex­ec­u­tives and 33 heads.

The nine-mem­ber ex­ec­u­tive, WASA said, is now ful­ly in place, while 25 of the 33 heads have been named.

The au­thor­i­ty stressed that these heads do not form part of the ex­ec­u­tive. All po­si­tions so far are act­ing ap­point­ments.

The new struc­ture, WASA said, will bring an­nu­al costs down from $69.9 mil­lion to $30.8 mil­lion, though the au­thor­i­ty has not pub­lished full ap­point­ment lists or the cur­rent salary break­down for these roles.

In­ter­nal emails seen by Guardian Me­dia show 24 ap­point­ments have been made since June 25 to what is re­ferred to as the “WASA Evo­lu­tion Team.”

In­ter­nal fig­ures show salaries for se­nior posts range be­tween $50,000 and $108,000 a month.

Based on those fig­ures so far, the  to­tal an­nu­al cost of the new man­age­ment struc­ture is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $17,370,000, with the re­main­ing eight heads to be ap­proved.

The au­thor­i­ty has promised that all posts will be ad­ver­tised be­fore mak­ing any of the po­si­tions per­ma­nent.