Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has slammed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion’s han­dling of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), call­ing out their trans­for­ma­tion plan and ap­point­ment of Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, whom he de­scribed as a “failed CEO from Bar­ba­dos,” to helm the agency. He de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to scrap the trans­for­ma­tion plan, say­ing it cost the tax­pay­er $13.4 mil­lion and would have sent home 2,500 work­ers.

Padarath de­liv­ered the scathing at­tack dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on the mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on Mon­day night.

“They brought in a failed CEO from Bar­ba­dos who had very lit­tle track record in terms of change man­age­ment, in terms of chang­ing out the au­thor­i­ty. In­stead, they were look­ing to pass the buck on to some­body else for why the trans­for­ma­tion plan would have failed, be­cause there was no po­lit­i­cal will to get it done,” Padarath said.

He crit­i­cised the PNM for us­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars on the plan, not­ing it cost mil­lions of in tax­pay­er funds to de­vel­op and would have threat­ened around 2,500 WASA em­ploy­ees had the PNM re­mained in pow­er af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“The plan alone cost­ed tax­pay­ers 13.4 mil­lion dol­lars. Hear what were the main rec­om­men­da­tions Mr Speak­er, 1,500 month­ly paid jobs to be made re­dun­dant. They were go­ing home Mr Speak­er, 1,200 dai­ly paid work­ers made re­dun­dant. They were go­ing home, and this was just in the first in­stance, tak­ing you to about 2,500 work­ers from WASA go­ing home in the first in­stance.”

Padarath said a re­view of the trans­for­ma­tion plan re­vealed that $1.8 mil­lion was paid to the head of trans­for­ma­tion but no tar­gets were set by WASA.

He al­so claimed sig­nif­i­cant sums were paid to a con­sul­tant, while over $1m was paid to mem­bers of a le­gal team for work done in the last year.

Hal­l­i­day, a St Kitts Nevis na­tion­al, was an­nounced as WASA CEO on Au­gust 30, 2024 but for­mal­ly as­sumed of­fice on De­cem­ber 1, 2024, af­ter a one-month de­fer­ral. Hal­l­i­day had pre­vi­ous­ly been serv­ing as gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty (BWA). He was cred­it­ed with trans­form­ing the BWA in­to a “ze­ro-bud­get en­ti­ty” dur­ing his tenure there.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Hal­l­i­day for a re­sponse to Padarath’s claim about him but there was no re­sponse from him up to press time.

Padarath had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence at WASA, fol­low­ing claims that he was over­step­ping his of­fice by as­sign­ing ju­nior staffers to over­see Hal­l­i­day’s work.

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les made the al­le­ga­tion, nam­ing Je­van Joseph and Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh as the two in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly act­ing on the min­is­ter’s be­half at WASA.

How­ev­er, Padarath de­scribed this claim as base­less, in­sist­ing Hal­l­i­day re­port­ed di­rect­ly to him while the au­thor­i­ty was await­ing the ap­point­ment of a new board. The board was even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed on June 5.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Padarath ques­tioned the com­po­si­tion of the WASA trans­for­ma­tion man­age­ment team.

“What was very strange was the names of the le­gal team, Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC, which the mem­ber for Bara­tria/San Juan spoke about, so mem­ber, this is more than the one bil­lion you spoke about but then you have the first gen­tle­man Ker­win Gar­cia, who was prob­a­bly spread­ing the gospel in WASA as well.”

He al­so ac­cused the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of award­ing $25 mil­lion in con­tracts at WASA to an in­di­vid­ual who al­so al­leged­ly served as a cam­paign man­ag­er for the PNM in the Arou­ca/Lopinot con­stituen­cy.

He claimed among the con­tracts was a $3 mil­lion sole-se­lect award ap­proved days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“There was a set­ting up of a trans­for­ma­tion of­fice. I then asked where is this of­fice? Is it at WASA? No­body could tell me where this of­fice is. Lat­er, I found out that they leased an of­fice on Scott-Bushe Street for 3 mil­lion dol­lars for five peo­ple to op­er­ate out of. When I start­ed to ask the ques­tions, I got two res­ig­na­tions.”

Padarath said he had al­ready sent a file on their find­ings to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to de­ter­mine if fur­ther ac­tion could be tak­en.

The WASA plan im­ple­ment­ed by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion sought to ad­dress the long-stand­ing is­sues of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, poor ser­vice de­liv­ery, and fi­nan­cial con­straints with­in the au­thor­i­ty through a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach that in­clud­ed man­age­ment re­struc­tur­ing, in­fra­struc­ture up­grades, and im­proved wa­ter re­source man­age­ment.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les cau­tioned Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of WASA, which he claimed could jeop­ar­dise ac­cess to for­eign fund­ing for projects.

“At the end of the day, they will make not one cent avail­able for you if you can­not show if you have a vi­able trans­for­ma­tion plan to im­prove the wa­ter sup­ply. It is hinged on that. So, when you rip it, you don’t just rip a doc­u­ment, but you rip work that was done not by politi­cians, but work done by tech­nocrats with­in the in­dus­try and stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try that has the po­ten­tial to tran­scend race, re­li­gion, ge­og­ra­phy, and pol­i­tics.”