Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty will get a new CEO from No­vem­ber 1.

The au­thor­i­ty con­firmed yes­ter­day that Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, who is cur­rent­ly the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty, will leave the po­si­tion he held there for the past sev­en years to make his way to Trinidad and To­ba­go to take up the WASA job.

Hal­l­i­day was born in St Kitts but has spent most of this life in Bar­ba­dos.

He was the run­ner-up in the in­ter­view process when WASA be­gan the process of re­cruit­ing ex­ec­u­tives in its re­struc­tur­ing process.

How­ev­er, in Ju­ly, the Zim­bab­wean na­tion­al who was hired to lead the au­thor­i­ty ahead of him died be­fore tak­ing of­fice.

On Mon­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­vealed ne­go­ti­a­tions were com­plete but didn’t di­vulge a name.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Gon­za­les said it ap­peared the WASA board had made a good choice, giv­en some of the re­spons­es he’s re­ceived.

“I have been get­ting nu­mer­ous con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages around the world and in the re­gion about the choice of the new CEO. Clear­ly, he is well known around the world by wa­ter sec­tor ex­perts,” Gon­za­les said.

“I just want to thank the cur­rent act­ing CEO Kelvin Ro­main for his tremen­dous sup­port over the last two years and I look for­ward to him play­ing a role in the con­tin­ued trans­for­ma­tion of the wa­ter sec­tor in T&T. I look for­ward to the new in­com­ing CEO us­ing his great depth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence to dri­ve the trans­for­ma­tion process for­ward.”

In a state­ment, WASA chair­man Ravi Nan­ga said, “Mr Hal­l­i­day has an en­vi­able track record of suc­cess and his mix of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence will bring in­spi­ra­tional lead­er­ship to the con­tin­u­ing trans­for­ma­tion of the au­thor­i­ty. We are ea­ger for his ar­rival and the in­stal­la­tion of the rest of the lead­er­ship team, and we are look­ing for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er as we move WASA to be the util­i­ty of the fu­ture.”

Ac­cord­ing to WASA, Hal­l­i­day is “no stranger to Trinidad and To­ba­go, hav­ing spent a decade here as gen­er­al man­ag­er in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions re­tail in­dus­try.

Hal­l­i­day is a Doc­tor­al Stu­dent at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, in the Doc­tor of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­gramme, with em­pha­sis on In­tel­li­gent Wa­ter Sys­tems. He holds an MBA and Post-Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma & Cer­tifi­cate in Busi­ness from the Heri­ot-Watt Uni­ver­si­ty, Ed­in­burgh, Scot­land; and has been a Re­search As­so­ciate in the De­part­ment of Civ­il and En­vi­ron­men­tal En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da since 2018.

Hal­l­i­day’s an­nounce­ment first broke in the Bar­ba­dos me­dia. Lo­cal me­dia there re­port­ed that the an­nounce­ment was made in a memo to Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty staff.

“I wish to ex­tend my heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion to each mem­ber of the au­thor­i­ty for what I re­gard as your un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion, re­lent­less ef­fort, and sup­port through­out my time with the au­thor­i­ty,” Hal­l­i­day is re­port­ed to have said in the memo.

“It has been an im­mense priv­i­lege, and I feel ho­n­oured that we have been able to ac­com­plish no­table and dis­tinct progress in the past eight years.”

In Bar­ba­dos, he was be­ing praised for im­prov­ing wa­ter re­source man­age­ment, work­ing to re­place age­ing in­fra­struc­ture and leaks, and im­prov­ing cus­tomer ser­vice while col­lect­ing out­stand­ing ar­rears.

WASA has been try­ing to re­struc­ture its man­age­ment for al­most three years.

In 2021, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Dr Lennox Sealy, re­signed five months af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion. Sealy’s de­par­ture fol­lowed the sus­pen­sion of a se­nior di­rec­tor over mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to WASA’s board.

Nan­ga then took over as CEO.

In 2022, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said WASA had 426 ex­ec­u­tive man­agers and the in­ten­tion was to cut it by 50 per cent (213 man­agers).

In June, Nan­ga said the com­pa­ny had hired nine man­agers to run the au­thor­i­ty.