Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath met with em­ploy­ees of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) yes­ter­day, some of whom he says were “on the chop­ping block” un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing a brief vis­it to WASA’s head­quar­ters, Padarath ad­dressed staff in what he de­scribed as a meet-and-greet ses­sion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter shar­ing pho­tos to his so­cial me­dia page, the min­is­ter said em­ploy­ees ex­pressed re­lief and grat­i­tude for the se­cu­ri­ty of their jobs un­der the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment.

He as­sured that more de­tails will be re­vealed dur­ing to­mor­row’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Padarath's vis­it came days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would scrap the planned WASA re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme ini­ti­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment regime. The PM said the move was part of cost-cut­ting mea­sures the Cab­i­net felt was nec­es­sary. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the move was ex­pect­ed to save WASA at least $30 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Speak­ing af­ter the PM at the brief­ing, Padarath had re­as­sured WASA work­ers that there would be no mass job cuts but ex­plained that the de­ci­sion would on­ly af­fect 34 top se­nior man­agers. Not­ing that WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day was not in­clud­ed in this dri­ve, Padarath said it was an at­tempt to re­lieve the “top-heavy lay­ers.”

Padarath said then, “The de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net to­day on­ly af­fects 34 po­si­tions of top se­nior man­agers that was brought in un­der the trans­for­ma­tion process. ... It’s a top-heavy lay­er of ex­ec­u­tive man­agers that would have been brought in un­der Min­is­ter Gon­za­les.

“Many of those 34 were in sub­stan­tive po­si­tions be­fore and then came on to con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments. So, there­fore, there will be a vari­a­tion in terms of whether or not who among those 34 will go back to sub­stan­tive po­si­tions. But, there will be no mass of em­ploy­ees go­ing home at WASA."

There has been no word from Padarath since on whether that vari­a­tion process has be­gun.

How­ev­er, the an­nounce­ment caused some un­ease among work­ers at the util­i­ty.

In 2022, then-pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced a sig­nif­i­cant re­struc­tur­ing of WASA, aim­ing to re­duce its 426 man­age­ment po­si­tions by 50 per cent. This move was part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to cut op­er­at­ing costs by 25 per cent and en­hance the util­i­ty’s ef­fi­cien­cy.

The de­ci­sion fol­lowed a 2016 Cab­i­net re­port that high­light­ed WASA’s over­staffing, not­ing that the au­thor­i­ty’s man­age­ment struc­ture was more than dou­ble the ap­proved size, with 426 man­agers in­stead of the rec­om­mend­ed 172. The re­port al­so in­di­cat­ed that WASA’s to­tal work­force ex­ceed­ed 5,000 em­ploy­ees, far sur­pass­ing the 3,600 deemed ap­pro­pri­ate for its op­er­a­tions.

In Ju­ly 2022, Gon­za­les con­firmed that the re­struc­tur­ing was un­der­way, with the Hu­man Re­source Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee ap­prov­ing new ex­ec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages. Sub­se­quent­ly, nine new man­agers were ap­point­ed, in­clud­ing Hal­l­i­day, a St Kitts and Nevis na­tion­al, as the new CEO.

Fol­low­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the new ex­ec­u­tive team, the com­mit­tee planned to ad­vise on the ap­point­ment of 34 deputy po­si­tions to sup­port the lead­er­ship.

Be­fore the planned re­struc­tur­ing, WASA’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture com­prised 12 ex­ec­u­tives over­seen by the board of com­mis­sion­ers and the CEO. How­ev­er, the hi­er­ar­chy was said to be com­plex with over­lap­ping re­port­ing lines.