News of the re­struc­tur­ing of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty on Thurs­day came as lit­tle sur­prise to the pop­u­la­tion, as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has been speak­ing about moves to trans­form the State com­pa­ny since 2021.

But what may have star­tled the cit­i­zen­ry was ex­act­ly how “top heavy” WASA is, with 426 ex­ec­u­tive man­agers at the helm, es­pe­cial­ly since there has been no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for em­ploy­ing so many man­agers at the au­thor­i­ty.

The in­ten­tion now is to re­duce that num­ber by half, ef­fec­tive­ly send­ing home 213 man­agers as the State com­pa­ny moves to re­duce costs by 25 per cent.

There have been se­ri­ous con­cerns about WASA’s op­er­a­tions, prof­itabil­i­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness in car­ry­ing out its man­date to de­liv­er a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply to the en­tire coun­try over the decades.

Al­le­ga­tions of ques­tion­able prac­tices by WASA through­out the years have al­so been nu­mer­ous and in re­cent times, this news­pa­per has high­light­ed many such is­sues, rang­ing from an al­leged VSEP scam, wa­ter truck­ing rack­et, im­prop­er hir­ing and ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ees and im­prop­er ten­der­ing process­es in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tracts by the au­thor­i­ty.

All of these prac­tices have con­tributed to WASA haem­or­rhag­ing mil­lions of dol­lars.

Now, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Gon­za­les, WASA has been or­dered to plug its own leaks, be­gin­ning with the hefty amount of mon­ey be­ing paid to its staff, which, from all ac­counts, has ex­ceed­ed the re­quired lim­it.

The re­port­ed mis­man­age­ment of WASA has in part con­tributed to the over­staffing is­sue the Gov­ern­ment is now tak­ing ac­tion to fix, nev­er mind the fact that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have been ac­cused of fa­cil­i­tat­ing the prob­lem.

In­deed, the is­sue of us­ing the State com­pa­ny to award jobs to the “boys and girls,” even at the ob­vi­ous ex­pense of plac­ing square pegs in round holes, has been re­spon­si­ble for set­ting the shaky foun­da­tion and op­er­a­tional in­ef­fi­cien­cies which the State is now strug­gling to get a han­dle on.

And while sights are now set on rak­ing in rev­enue to the tune of $1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, there must be a con­cert­ed ef­fort not to re­peat the mis­takes of the past.

While there has been talk from the Min­is­ter about a new struc­ture at WASA which will see five ser­vice ar­eas with five man­agers, who will di­rect­ly re­port to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, cre­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and elim­i­nat­ing red tape, one can on­ly hope there will be greater ac­count­abil­i­ty for the sake of the pub­lic purse, since the au­thor­i­ty is heav­i­ly sub­sidised to the tune of bil­lions an­nu­al­ly by the State.

With the whit­tling down at the top and ex­pect­ed cuts among unionised staff to come, the in­dis­crim­i­nate award­ing of work to con­trac­tors should al­so come un­der harsh scruti­ny, as WASA can ill-af­ford to re­vert to its ways of old. Of course, the stat­ed in­tent by the au­thor­i­ty to al­so rake in a bil­lion in rev­enue al­so means the pub­lic should pre­pare it­self for a rate hike as well.

WASA’s woe­ful state of af­fairs has been well ven­ti­lat­ed. But with the coun­try no longer reap­ing oil and gas prof­its of old, the time has un­doubt­ed­ly come to vig­or­ous­ly en­sure the au­thor­i­ty is not on­ly com­mer­cial­ly sound but is pro­vid­ing the most vi­tal com­mod­i­ty to cit­i­zens of this coun­try.