SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Al­though a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee has rec­om­mend­ed the in­cre­men­tal dis­so­lu­tion of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and re­place it with a Wa­ter Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny with a re­vised wa­ter sec­tor mod­el over a three-year tran­si­tionary pe­ri­od, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said Cab­i­net held a dif­fer­ent view in which the trans­for­ma­tion should take place.

“Cab­i­net is of the view with an em­pow­ered man­age­ment team and a man­age­ment that is held ac­count­able to the peo­ple of T&T and to be giv­en the man­date to man­age in the way that any mod­ern or­gan­i­sa­tion ought to be man­aged there is ab­solute­ly no need to wind down the op­er­a­tions of WASA at this point in time,” he said at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

Such trans­for­ma­tion, Gon­za­les said will re­quire fund­ing, adding they have of­fers “from the IDB, from CAF, from the pri­vate sec­tor and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners” on the ta­ble.

“Based on what is most fea­si­ble we will go back to Cab­i­net with a rec­om­men­da­tion so as to iden­ti­fy a source of fund­ing. Yes, it is go­ing to take some mon­ey but it is go­ing to be monies well spent.”

The com­mit­tee stat­ed there ex­ists com­pelling ev­i­dence trade unions had be­come sup­pli­ers of good and ser­vices to the au­thor­i­ty while man­age­ment turned a blind eye, con­sti­tut­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est.

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed the au­thor­i­ty’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance has been poor with chron­ic deficits be­ing a reg­u­lar fea­ture, say­ing, “this is a breed­ing ground for cor­rup­tion and there is con­cern that there is a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion in the pro­cure­ment of ser­vices by the au­thor­i­ty.”

Al­so at the news con­fer­ence were WASA’s chair­man Dr Lennox Sealy and its act­ing CEO Alan Poon King.

Gon­za­les said the Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to im­me­di­ate­ly ap­point Sealy as WASA’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and CEO to as­sume full con­trol of wa­ter com­pa­ny.

Sealy will re­place act­ing CEO Alan Poon King who will re­sume du­ties as di­rec­tor of cus­tomer ser­vices.

A deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor will al­so be ap­point­ed to as­sist Sealy.

Cab­i­net has put to­geth­er a sub-com­mit­tee chaired by min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and in­clude min­is­ters Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Bri­an Man­ning, Sham­fa Cud­joe, Si­mon de No­bre­ga, Franklin Khan, Don­na Cox and Gon­za­les to over­see the trans­for­ma­tion of WASA.

The re­port, Gon­za­les said, will be laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives next Fri­day fol­low­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment.

Gon­za­les said, “Ef­fi­cien­cy was sac­ri­ficed for in­ter alia po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and man­age­ment ac­count­abil­i­ty ex­change for in­dus­tri­al sta­bil­i­ty re­sult­ing in an or­gan­i­sa­tion in which there is lit­tle cor­re­la­tion be­tween the con­tents of col­lec­tive agree­ments and the re­al­i­ties of pro­vid­ing a re­li­able ser­vice to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion at an af­ford­able and ac­cept­able cost to the tax­pay­ers.”

Gon­za­les did not de­ny cor­rup­tion is ev­i­dent in WASA.

“Yes, cor­rup­tion and the al­le­ga­tion of cor­rup­tion and the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion around WASA is an is­sue.”

Ques­tioned if any de­ci­sion had been tak­en to cut WASA’s 5,000 staff, Gon­za­les said no.

“At this point in time, the Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en a de­ci­sion to en­gage in any vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion or cut­ting of staff. This is some­thing the new man­age­ment of WASA will have to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit of the staff com­po­si­tion of the au­thor­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, he said in­for­ma­tion re­ceived by in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tions and pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments sug­gest­ed WASA was over­staffed.

In 2013, he said 1,200 of WASA’s 5,000 work­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in a VSEP pro­gramme which cost tax­pay­ers $360 mil­lion.

By 2015, Gon­za­les said the staff com­po­si­tion re­turned to 5,000.

Be­tween 2010 and 2020, Gon­za­les said over $23 bil­lion was in­ject­ed in­to WASA.

“And you look in­to what are some of the things this mon­ey was spent, in my view, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of that mon­ey was spent not in try­ing to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply to the peo­ple of this coun­try.”

This mon­ey paid con­trac­tors, bills, over­time pay­ments and hefty salaries.

Gon­za­les said the sub-com­mit­tee and WASA’s man­age­ment will have to ad­dress mount­ing debt.

While WASA owed con­trac­tors $650 mil­lion, Gon­za­les said, “Of course, in a new WASA a lot of these works can be done in house as op­posed to go­ing out to pri­vate con­trac­tors.”

In the com­ing days, Gon­za­les said WASA’s board will meet the three unions rep­re­sent­ing WASA work­ers.

Gon­za­les said the most crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion re­quired at WASA was prop­er man­age­ment.

Man­agers must be held to ac­count.

"An or­gan­i­sa­tion can­not be cor­rupt if man­agers and man­age­ment are not do­ing what they are sup­posed to do to fos­ter that cul­ture of open­ness and trans­paren­cy in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. We be­lieve the first or­der of busi­ness in the trans­for­ma­tion is get­ting man­age­ment right."

In­sist­ing that T&T was not wa­ter-scarce, Gon­za­les said WASA is faced with a de­sali­na­tion bill of al­most US$7 mil­lion per month.

He held the view that we would not buy de­sali­na­tion wa­ter, stat­ing if WASA drill wells through­out the coun­try we could ob­tain be­tween 30 to 40 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter in its grid.

When peo­ple do not get wa­ter, Gon­za­les said they pay a po­lit­i­cal price.

"I can tell you it is an em­bar­rass­ment to me...a na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment that you have to re­ly heav­i­ly on wa­ter trucks to put in peo­ple's tanks."

Not­ing that on­ly 34 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion re­ceives wa­ter around the clock, Gon­za­les said this was un­sat­is­fac­to­ry, promis­ing to pro­vide at least 80 to 90 per cent of the coun­try with an ef­fi­cient pipe-borne sup­ply in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

In go­ing for­ward, Gon­za­les said will present to Cab­i­net "a pro­gramme of crit­i­cal works" for ap­proval.

Gon­za­les said re­pairs would have to be un­der­tak­en on wa­ter plants, ma­chin­ery and pumps that con­tin­u­ous­ly break down which caus­es dis­rup­tions in the wa­ter sup­ply.