The board of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has been man­dat­ed by Cab­i­net to im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin the ex­e­cu­tion of a trans­for­ma­tion plan for WASA, which will start with the cut­ting of 213 mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive team, fol­lowed by cuts in an un­known num­ber of WASA staff.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les said Cab­i­net ap­proved the trans­for­ma­tion plan at its meet­ing to­day.

WASA has 426 ex­ec­u­tive man­agers and the in­ten­tion is to cut it by 50 per cent (213 man­agers).

The Min­is­ter said the cut­ting of oth­er staff will not be done with­out dis­cus­sions with the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing units.

He was re­luc­tant to give a num­ber or per­cent­age for staff cuts say­ing he did not want to prej­u­dice the dis­cus­sions be­tween the board and the unions.

WASA cur­rent­ly em­ploys close to 5,000 work­ers.

Gon­za­les said there is recog­ni­tion that WASA is over­staffed and that vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion agree­ments are like­ly to be part of the dis­cus­sions.

He said the dri­ve is to­wards the em­ploy­ment of new tech­nol­o­gy that will en­sure bet­ter ef­fi­cien­cy and added that it will open up op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to be reskilled and re­tooled, and for young peo­ple, in par­tic­u­lar, to ben­e­fit from some new jobs.

At a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les said that WASA will take on a new struc­ture that will see five ser­vice ar­eas with five man­agers who will di­rect­ly re­port to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer.

He said the lev­el of man­age­ment must be re­duced to en­sure WASA runs more ef­fi­cient­ly and is not caught up in too much red tape.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter, this struc­ture will en­sure they can quick­ly ad­dress mat­ters to en­sure cit­i­zens are ad­e­quate­ly and re­li­ably served.

FILE: Employees of WASA at the site to fix a water leak on Independence Avenue in San Fernando.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The plan, he said, is geared to­ward re­duc­ing costs by 25 per cent and in­creas­ing rev­enue col­lec­tion by $1 bil­lion.

He told the news con­fer­ence that the prob­lems at WASA were not al­ways about lack of fund­ing.

In fact, the Min­is­ter said, be­tween 2010 and 2020 $25 bil­lion was trans­ferred to WASA and that it would have been rea­son­able to ex­pect that "as a coun­try, we would have a world-class wa­ter and waste­water fa­cil­i­ty".

"We have any­thing but that and the sad truth is that the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion can at­test to that," the Min­is­ter said.

Gon­za­les told the me­dia it was for that rea­son the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to in­ter­vene in the op­er­a­tions of the Au­thor­i­ty.

"It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al," he not­ed.

The gov­ern­ment, he point­ed out, had es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee of par­lia­ment to crit­i­cal ob­serve WASA op­er­a­tions and that a sub-com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that the func­tions in­her­ent in WASA were so deeply en­trenched that in the cur­rent form the or­gan­i­sa­tion was in­ca­pable of meet­ing de­mands.

It al­so found that main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo would leave the state in an un­ac­cept­able po­si­tion of fund­ing WASA to the tune of $2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly while it re­mained un­able to trans­form it­self.

He said that some changes that were ad­dressed al­lowed WASA to reach over 64 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion to­day ei­ther 24 hours three days a week or 24 hours sev­en days a week.

"In the next few months, many com­mu­ni­ties will feel the im­pact of sta­bilised sup­ply," he said.

He said a leak re­pair and road sta­bil­i­sa­tion dri­ve has al­so been on­go­ing.

WASA headquarters in St Joseph.

Gon­za­les added that leaks are now be­ing tracked and pipelines with high burst propen­si­ties are ear­marked for re­place­ment, not­ing that this will re­duce the "dec­i­ma­tion of new­ly paved roads" done to fix leaks when heavy equip­ment are used over aged pipelines.

The Min­is­ter not­ed that plans to re­duce staff in the past have failed, in­clud­ing in 2011 when the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment sought to cut the num­ber of work­ers from 4,736 to around 2,500.

He said $397 mil­lion was spent on a staff re­duc­tion ex­er­cise which was par­tial­ly fund­ed by an In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund loan.

He ar­gued that the pro­ce­dure was done poor­ly, with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for key peo­ple to per­form par­tic­u­lar roles, re­sult­ing in a mas­sive re­hir­ing of staff to a fig­ure high­er than be­fore the re­struc­tur­ing be­gan.

The Min­is­ter said the new mod­el will be more busi­ness-ori­ent­ed with the cus­tomer be­ing the main fo­cus.