Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Poli­ical Re­porter

Roshan Bab­wah, who comes from the field of law, hu­man re­sources and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, has been ap­point­ed chair­man of the board of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

This was con­firmed at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day looked at pro­pos­als for the re­vo­ca­tion of ap­point­ments of sev­er­al boards and the ap­point­ments of oth­er boards. Some done so far, she said, were WASA, EM­BD, TSTT, NGC, MTS and PSAEL. The process will con­tin­ue.

She said board ap­point­ments were al­so con­sum­ing a lot of Gov­ern­ment’s time, as with­out board ap­point­ments, ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance couldn’t be done be­cause a lot of de­ci­sions have to be made by boards.

Padarath said once the board in place, in­for­ma­tion avail­able to the board will then be brought in­to ef­fect. He pre­ferred not to spec­u­late on if le­gal ac­tion would fol­low if any­one from WASA was to be de­mot­ed or los­es their job. He said those would be mat­ters for the board to treat with and there would be an HR per­son ap­point­ed to the board.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cab­i­net al­so dis­cussed ap­prov­ing an an­ti-ter­ror­ism/an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy as T&T was on a black­list and has now moved to a brown­list as a re­sult of ef­forts pri­or to the UNC Gov­ern­ment en­ter­ing of­fice and some oth­ers done “with­in our time,” she said.

On how she would grade the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance in its first month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “I can give you many an­swers to that and I hope you can come up with your own an­swers. Things do take time. Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance for one month, as I say, that is for the pub­lic to de­cide on their own. There is al­ways room for im­prove­ment.

“What­ev­er comes our way we’ll han­dle it. I don’t want to come here every week and speak about doom and gloom and in­voke fear in­to peo­ple.

“Cit­i­zens have their dai­ly is­sues to deal with so the last thing: I don’t want to stress any­body. We’re elect­ed to deal with prob­lems, we aren’t per­fect but we’ll try and do our best that we can in all of the cir­cum­stances.”