The new­ly-ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of cash-strapped Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) Dr Lennox Sealy has com­mit­ted to putting five per cent of his salary in­to a fund to as­sist cus­tomers. Sealy re­vealed this dur­ing an in­ter­view on TTT's Now Morn­ing Show Mon­day.

This comes just a week af­ter the gov­ern­ment re­placed the for­mer act­ing CEO Al­lan Poon-King with Sealy, fol­low­ing the

Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee's re­port on the op­er­a­tions of WASA.

"I am go­ing to give five per cent of my salary in­to a fund and I am go­ing to ask our tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers who are out there to iden­ti­fy peo­ple who need a tank or some kind of ac­cess to wa­ter."

Sealy said he will al­so ask em­ploy­ees to make a month­ly con­tri­bu­tion to­wards the fund.

"And I am go­ing to ask every em­ploy­ee who comes to work to­mor­row if they can con­tribute $10 a month to that fund."

He would be as­sist­ing peo­ple who are "at the end of the pipeline" and have is­sues re­ceiv­ing wa­ter."

He added, "I am go­ing to ask my tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers to help them get wa­ter. So I want to put my mouth and mon­ey in the same place." Sealy said they would al­so be look­ing at im­ple­ment­ing a me­ter­ing sys­tem. While that has been in dis­cus­sion for some time, Sealy said he was not aware of why it has not been im­ple­ment­ed.

"But cer­tain­ly me­ter­ing is on the cards, a cer­tain per­cent­age of in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers are al­ready me­tered, new de­vel­op­ments are me­tered but here’s the chal­lenge..yes­ter­day evening around 5 o'clock I was stand­ing at the cor­ner of Hen­ry and Duke Streets with one of my en­gi­neers, I am look­ing down in­to a hole, there is a leak and TSTT pass­es and T&TEC pass­es and we are try­ing to fig­ure out how to get in there with­out... I am mak­ing a link here as to what we have to do to make sure there is ac­cu­rate dis­tri­b­u­tion and the in­fra­struc­ture."

Sealy has sug­gest­ed to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les a per­ma­nent util­i­ty com­mis­sion be es­tab­lished and a map of the un­der­ground in­fra­struc­ture is un­der­tak­en to help with their dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem.

Sealy said he launched WASA 2024 yes­ter­day and has set up a com­mit­tee to re­ceive the 66 pages of rec­om­men­da­tions and sug­ges­tions he so­licit­ed from em­ploy­ees.

"When you have em­ploy­ees start­ing to feel con­fi­dent that some­one is in place who is lis­ten­ing to them and im­ple­ment­ing, it is the thing that ig­nites the process. So that has start­ed to­day. I am launch­ing WASA 2024."

Not­ing that his con­tract is for three years, he said he would not be around when the trans­for­ma­tion is com­plet­ed.

"There’s a train that is on the track and I am nei­ther a ma­gi­cian nor a fool. I am sim­ply go­ing to put the train back on the track and I am go­ing to hand it over to some­one else."

Ad­mit­ting that trans­form­ing WASA is no easy task, he said pro­duc­ing wa­ter alone is a big chal­lenge.

"I spent a half-day at De­sal and in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, I learned of the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the wa­ter qual­i­ty in the Gulf of Paria. So we are man­ag­ing a prod­uct that is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing, one it is dis­ap­pear­ing from the rivers, two it is high risk that means many peo­ple can ac­cess it with­out us know­ing and there­fore it makes col­lec­tion, har­vest­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, more chal­leng­ing than oth­er pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties.”

Asked about fund­ing to get the work done, he said Gon­za­les has been talk­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and on Wednes­day he (Sealy) will be meet­ing with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank to dis­cuss the wa­ter treat­ment plants. "Ob­vi­ous­ly if we don’t have the mon­ey we are go­ing to have to do it through loans, not rock­et sci­ence, and that you are go­ing to see over the next year a num­ber of projects of that na­ture. Every plant I have vis­it­ed so far are in need of some sort of re­fur­bish­ment or up­grade so there are a lot of no-brain­ers that I am faced with. I don’t have to work rock­et sci­ence. There are a num­ber of things I need to do as a trans­for­ma­tion man­ag­er so we have to bor­row, a sim­ple an­swer to your ques­tion."

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns from "arm­chair ex­perts" about the gov­er­nance arrange­ments at WASA," he said he re­ports to the Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter re­ports to the cab­i­net and the board re­ports to him (Sealy). "The Min­is­ter can fire me at any time," he added. He is not con­cerned about any op­po­si­tion he might face from the union.

"As far as I am con­cerned peo­ple are work­ers first paid by an or­gan­i­sa­tion be­fore they are union mem­bers so I am go­ing to keep work­ing with the peo­ple with the work­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those peo­ple who want to see WASA re­al­ly work well and there is a lot of them."