Act­ing Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Jee­van Joseph has moved swift­ly to re­as­sure em­ploy­ees that there will be no fur­ther re­trench­ments at the util­i­ty.

He has al­so re­it­er­at­ed that no ex­ist­ing staff mem­bers lost their jobs in the purge of top ex­ec­u­tives on Wednes­day and that this sta­tus quo will be main­tained while the util­i­ty un­der­goes a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion.

“No in­cum­bent WASA em­ploy­ees were ter­mi­nat­ed. All ex­ist­ing staff have re­tained their po­si­tions,” Joseph stat­ed in his first of­fi­cial in­ter­view since as­sum­ing the post with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He not­ed that job se­cu­ri­ty re­mains a cor­ner­stone of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s tran­si­tion strat­e­gy.

Joseph was ap­point­ed fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial dis­missal of for­mer CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and nine top ex­ec­u­tives on Wednes­day by the board. This move fol­lowed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to scrap the WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan adopt­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Joseph ac­knowl­edged the con­cerns raised by some over his ap­point­ment fol­low­ing Hal­l­i­day’s de­par­ture but main­tained that ad­just­ment is to be ex­pect­ed.

“It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that lead­er­ship tran­si­tions re­quire ad­just­ment at all lev­els, which is quite nor­mal dur­ing the change man­age­ment process. This has been pro­vid­ed for as we roll out the re­de­fined way for­ward for the au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

When asked about the dis­missal of nine ex­ter­nal hires who ex­it­ed along­side the for­mer CEO, Joseph de­clined to com­ment, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Joseph al­so de­scribed the on­go­ing change as part of a broad­er re­struc­tur­ing process aimed at strength­en­ing WASA’s in­ter­nal ca­pac­i­ty and ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

He said em­ploy­ees can be as­sured of “sta­ble and com­pe­tent lead­er­ship,” as he added that the tran­si­tion is be­ing guid­ed with em­pa­thy, struc­ture, and a fo­cus on na­tion­al ser­vice.

Joseph out­lined five key as­sur­ances for staff dur­ing this pe­ri­od: job se­cu­ri­ty, sta­ble and com­pe­tent lead­er­ship, a col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­ture that val­ues the in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge of ex­ist­ing staff, a con­tin­ued fo­cus on im­prov­ing wa­ter re­li­a­bil­i­ty, eq­ui­ty, and ser­vice qual­i­ty, and an em­pa­thet­ic ap­proach to the tran­si­tion, ground­ed in na­tion­al ser­vice.

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the fir­ings, Joseph has his sights firm­ly set on op­er­a­tional sta­bil­i­ty and en­hanced ser­vice de­liv­ery.

“My im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is to sta­bilise op­er­a­tions and re­in­force the au­thor­i­ty’s com­mit­ment to ser­vice de­liv­ery,” he said.

“This in­cludes en­sur­ing that all on­go­ing projects con­tin­ue with­out dis­rup­tion, ac­cel­er­at­ing ef­forts to im­prove wa­ter re­li­a­bil­i­ty through pres­sure man­age­ment, leak de­tec­tion, and cus­tomer en­gage­ment, and align­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion around a clear roadmap. My fo­cus re­mains on de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble re­sults to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go — par­tic­u­lar­ly in un­der­served ar­eas — while fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­no­va­tion across all de­part­ments.”

Al­so speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, WASA chair­man Roshan Bab­wah con­firmed that de­spite con­cerns sur­round­ing the fir­ing of Hal­l­i­day and oth­er top ex­ec­u­tives, the au­thor­i­ty has not re­ceived any le­gal cor­re­spon­dence re­lat­ed to the mat­ter, in­clud­ing claims of wrong­ful dis­missal.

“We haven’t re­ceived any le­gal no­tices, what­ev­er ac­tion, what­ev­er have you, in any form or fash­ion. So as far as I’m aware, no, we have not re­ceived any doc­u­ments from any at­tor­neys.”

At­tempts to con­tact Hal­l­i­day for com­ment on whether he in­tends to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against WASA or to ob­tain de­tails re­gard­ing his sep­a­ra­tion were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

Calls were al­so made to sev­er­al oth­er dis­missed in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing WASA’s di­rec­tor of Cor­po­rate Fi­nance Kar­lene Am­mon, chief in­ter­nal au­di­tor Ria Chrysos­tom-Ryan, and di­rec­tor of Peo­ple, Trans­for­ma­tion and Cen­tral Ser­vices Neil Der­rick. How­ev­er, they de­clined to com­ment. Di­rec­tor of Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vices (North East) Shaira Ali did not re­spond to calls.

Hal­l­i­day was dis­missed two days af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­scribed the St Kitts and Nevis na­tive as a “failed CEO from Bar­ba­dos” dur­ing de­bate on the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view in Par­lia­ment.

De­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to scrap the WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan, which he said cost tax­pay­ers $13.4 mil­lion and would have sent home 2,500 work­ers, Padarath added that Hal­l­i­day “had very lit­tle track record in terms of change man­age­ment, in terms of chang­ing out the au­thor­i­ty.”

“In­stead, they (the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion) were look­ing to pass the buck on to some­body else for why the trans­for­ma­tion plan would have failed, be­cause there was no po­lit­i­cal will to get it done,” Padarath said.