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Friday, August 1, 2025

Tough decisions on WASA ahead

by

Guardian Media
1619 days ago
20210224

Cab­i­net has not ac­cept­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion to wind up the heav­i­ly in­debt­ed Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), and there is no de­ci­sion yet to cut staff. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, dras­tic mea­sures will be tak­en to deal with that “un­wieldy, over­staffed, un­pro­duc­tive and un­re­spon­sive" en­ti­ty.

Those words used to de­scribe WASA in a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee re­port, paint an un­flat­ter­ing pic­ture of the wa­ter com­pa­ny which had long out­lived its use­ful­ness by the time Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called for a re­view of its op­er­a­tions late last year. There is no deny­ing that it is an en­ti­ty in ur­gent need of dras­tic in­ter­ven­tions.

The mon­u­men­tal task of fix­ing WASA in­volves, at the very least, in­creas­ing wa­ter pro­duc­tion and stor­age; re­pair­ing aged pipeline and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture; and col­lect­ing out­stand­ing debts from res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomers.

But that is just the be­gin­ning. So much more is wrong with the pub­lic util­i­ty that the mea­sures cur­rent­ly be­ing ruled out by the Cab­i­net might not be avoid­able in the long term.

In par­tic­u­lar, the is­sue of cor­rup­tion, whether re­al or per­ceived, presents a chal­lenge for which the best rem­e­dy is swift and de­ci­sive ac­tion. There is no way to dodge some very un­pop­u­lar de­ci­sions, very like­ly of the kind that will in­cur the wrath of the unions rep­re­sent­ing WASA work­ers.

But for now, the tough ac­tion is start­ing from the top. Yes­ter­day, act­ing on some of the “in­de­pen­dent, le­gal and HR ad­vice” con­tained in the re­port, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les an­nounced a shake-up of WASA’s man­age­ment struc­ture. Among the im­me­di­ate ac­tions was the in­stal­la­tion of Dr Lennox Sealy as Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor with a man­date linked to a per­for­mance-based con­tract.

Dr Sealy, a con­sul­tant spe­cial­iz­ing in or­ga­ni­za­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion and de­vel­op­ment, has been in­volved in ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cis­es for gov­ern­ments across the re­gion. He was ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber to head WASA’s new board of di­rec­tors, just around the time that the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee was scru­ti­n­is­ing the util­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions.

There was a hint of the weight­i­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties he might be tak­ing on in the re­lease an­nounc­ing the new board which stat­ed that the new di­rec­tors would “pro­vide strate­gic di­rec­tion to trans­form the au­thor­i­ty in­to a high-qual­i­ty per­for­mance wa­ter and waste­water com­pa­ny, with a fo­cus on best prac­tice, good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

For Alan Poon King, who had been act­ing as CEO since De­cem­ber 2018, these changes mean that he re­verts to his po­si­tion as Di­rec­tor of Cus­tomer Care.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, get­ting the man­age­ment of WASA right is a top pri­or­i­ty. Wa­ter pro­vi­sion from WASA is a man­age­ment prob­lem, he said.

Ex­pect more tough de­ci­sions, in the com­ing days and weeks and more rev­e­la­tions when the sub­com­mit­tee's 135-page re­port is laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

For now, any con­cern that WASA would suf­fer the same fate as Petrotrin and be com­plete­ly shut down have eased. But that is on­ly be­cause the type of bit­ter pill that will have to be swal­lowed to treat all that ails the util­i­ty is still to be re­vealed.


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