SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

There has been a three-month de­lay in ap­point­ing a new man­age­ment team at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA). But, come Sep­tem­ber, there will be new man­agers in place as it push­es for­ward with its trans­for­ma­tion plan.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the com­pa­ny was will­ing to pay for tal­ent–the au­thor­i­ty’s new chief ex­ec­u­tive will be paid a month­ly salary of $100,000 along with an at­trac­tive bonus based on his/her per­for­mance.

Last De­cem­ber, WASA ad­ver­tised for a new chief ex­ec­u­tive and eight man­agers to bol­ster the au­thor­i­ty’s trans­for­ma­tion process, promis­ing by April 30 the po­si­tions would have been filled. How­ev­er, three months af­ter this dead­line, WASA is still hunt­ing for three man­agers.

“I recog­nised the de­lay. It was un­avoid­able be­cause of the due dili­gence that had to be tak­en by WASA,” Gon­za­les said.

He at­trib­uted the de­lay to the abun­dance of ap­pli­ca­tions for the posts. He said WASA re­ceived more than 1,500 ap­pli­ca­tions from Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, USA, Eu­rope, Eng­land, Africa, and the Mid­dle East. The CEO’s po­si­tion at­tract­ed close to 500 ap­pli­cants, in­clud­ing act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Kelvin Ro­main.

The po­si­tions ad­ver­tised are for wa­ter man­age­ment, ser­vices, tech­nolo­gies, fu­ture sys­tems and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cor­po­rate fi­nance, trans­for­ma­tion, and cen­tral ser­vices.

“It was a very lengthy process. A lot of back­ground checks had to be con­duct­ed on these ap­pli­cants and a num­ber of vir­tu­al in­ter­views had to be done. It was a very ro­bust screen­ing and vet­ting of the can­di­dates,” said Gon­za­les.

The ap­pli­cants were short­list­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60.

“And com­ing out of that process six can­di­dates were se­lect­ed a few weeks ago with three more po­si­tions to be filled soon,” the min­is­ter said. Gon­za­les said two of the six can­di­dates are women.

One of the suc­cess­ful can­di­dates will be the new CEO, but Gon­za­les opt­ed not to name the in­di­vid­ual or pro­vide any de­tails. An­oth­er can­di­date is a Trinida­di­an work­ing abroad in a wa­ter man­age­ment com­pa­ny with a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence who has agreed to come home to serve WASA. The third is a for­eign­er.

“There are sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nents of that trans­for­ma­tion plan that must be dri­ven by an ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team. We are await­ing the HRC (Hu­man Re­sources Com­mit­tee) to set the pa­ra­me­ters for the salary ne­go­ti­a­tions. Once that is com­plet­ed, we are ex­pect­ed to have the ap­point­ments,” he said.

WASA’s cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team is head­ed by Ro­main who works with five di­rec­tors, in­clud­ing the head of waste­water projects and wa­ter projects, all act­ing po­si­tions.

Gon­za­les said the salary ranges for the new ex­ec­u­tive team are yet to be fi­nalised.

“We have de­cid­ed to do things dif­fer­ent­ly,” Gon­za­les said.

In the past, the salary struc­ture for var­i­ous po­si­tions in WASA was not ap­proved by the HRC of the Cab­i­net.

“It was one of the things that con­tributed to the chal­lenges that we have in­side of WASA. We have peo­ple who are paid salaries that were not ap­proved by the HRC. When we start­ed the trans­for­ma­tion plan, we de­cid­ed that com­menc­ing with the ap­point­ment of the new ex­ec­u­tive, all salaries paid will be sub­ject to the ap­proval of the HRC,” Gon­za­les said.

The salary range of the cur­rent man­age­ment team is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000 to $85,000 month­ly.

“So, for a CEO I am told the fair mar­ket rate would be in the range of $100,000. Re­mem­ber, whilst it may in­crease re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages, we are go­ing with a new ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture and we will cut the cur­rent man­age­ment struc­ture of 426 by half, so this will bal­ance off. And there would be huge cost sav­ings in the struc­ture,” he said.

Will the new team al­so be giv­en perks and al­lowances?

“It is be­ing pro­posed that their com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages must be per­for­mance-based. So, once they meet the tar­get­ed per­for­mance they will be com­pen­sat­ed ac­cord­ing­ly. There would be bonus­es where tar­gets have been met,” Gon­za­les said.