RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

New Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day hit the ground run­ning over the week­end, start­ing work on Sun­day.

Hal­l­i­day vis­it­ed WASA’s head of­fice in St Joseph and its call cen­tre.

A re­lease from the au­thor­i­ty yes­ter­day said the new CEO out­lined plans to trans­form the or­gan­i­sa­tion, fo­cus­ing on open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment.

“Our util­i­ty’s suc­cess de­pends on the ded­i­ca­tion and ex­per­tise of our team,” Hal­l­i­day was quot­ed as say­ing.

“We will cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where every­one can con­tribute to our mis­sion of de­liv­er­ing safe and re­li­able wa­ter and waste­water ser­vices to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les sup­port­ed Hal­l­i­day’s ap­proach and high­light­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty and cus­tomer re­la­tions.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Gon­za­les called for stake­hold­er col­lab­o­ra­tion and urged Hal­l­i­day to speed up ef­forts to ex­pand 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply to 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion by year’s end.

“Kei­throy’s ex­pe­ri­ence in the wa­ter util­i­ty sec­tor strength­ens the au­thor­i­ty’s lead­er­ship team,” Gon­za­les said.

“We must ac­cel­er­ate on­go­ing projects and im­prove re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers to achieve our goals.”

Gon­za­les re­vealed Hal­l­i­day’s con­tract de­tails in Par­lia­ment, in­clud­ing a base salary of $100,000 per month, hous­ing and ve­hi­cle al­lowances, and a gra­tu­ity equal to 20 per cent of his gross salary up­on sat­is­fac­to­ry con­tract com­ple­tion. 

Gon­za­les al­so not­ed up­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture projects in his con­stituen­cy of Lopinot/Bon Air West, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing pipe-borne wa­ter to Up­per La Pas­to­ra, re­fur­bish­ing roads like Windy Hill, and in­stalling street­lights in Bon Air North.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so re­stored the Lopinot His­tor­i­cal Site and pledged on­go­ing work to im­prove bridges, wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties, and so­cial pro­grammes.

In Jan­u­ary this year, Gon­za­les an­nounced that 18 new wells will be drilled around the coun­try which will lead to an im­prove­ment in the sup­ply of wa­ter.

Ef­forts to con­tact Hal­l­i­day for fur­ther com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.