Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) as new CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day of­fi­cial­ly as­sumed his po­si­tion on Sun­day.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les em­pha­sised WASA's com­mit­ment to evolv­ing in­to an en­ti­ty that pri­ori­tis­es wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions while fos­ter­ing stronger cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships.

“I’m ex­cit­ed for this new chap­ter in WASA’s con­tin­ued ef­forts to evolve in­to an au­thor­i­ty that will al­ways be loy­al to the in­ter­ests of all its cus­tomers,” Gon­za­les said.

He added, “We aim for cus­tomers and stake­hold­ers to un­der­stand their role in en­sur­ing wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty for us now and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

Gon­za­les praised Hal­l­i­day’s ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the wa­ter util­i­ty sec­tor, not­ing that his lead­er­ship is ex­pect­ed to build on sev­er­al on­go­ing projects. These ini­tia­tives, he said, have al­ready ex­pand­ed 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply to 61 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, with pro­jec­tions to reach 70 per cent by year’s end. The min­is­ter urged the new lead­er­ship team to ac­cel­er­ate the pace of these projects and deep­en re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­mains res­olute and com­mit­ted to work­ing with the au­thor­i­ty to en­sure wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty in our beloved coun­try, even as we bat­tle the ef­fects of cli­mate change on this pre­cious re­source,” Gon­za­les added.

Dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, Gon­za­les dis­closed the terms of Hal­l­i­day’s con­tract.

It in­cludes a base salary of $100,000 per month, a month­ly hous­ing al­lowance of $8,000, a com­pa­ny-main­tained ve­hi­cle val­ued at up to $400,000 (VAT ex­clu­sive) for busi­ness and per­son­al use, re­im­burse­ment of $2,300 per month for busi­ness-re­lat­ed en­ter­tain­ment ex­pens­es and a $1,000-month­ly tele­phone al­lowance.

WASA an­nounced Hal­l­i­day’s ap­point­ment on Au­gust 30 and ini­tial­ly planned for him to be­gin his tenure on No­vem­ber 1. How­ev­er, Hal­l­i­day re­quest­ed a one-month de­fer­ment to ful­fil com­mit­ments in his then role and fa­cil­i­tate a smooth lead­er­ship tran­si­tion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Hal­l­i­day served as gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty, where he es­tab­lished a proven track record in the in­dus­try.