KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) is not con­vinced that a new per­son at the helm of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) will solve the many is­sues fac­ing the au­thor­i­ty.

St Kitts na­tion­al Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day was re­vealed as the new WASA CEO last week. His ap­point­ment is part of WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion­al process which be­gan in 2022 and in­cludes cut­ting 50 per cent of its man­agers.

How­ev­er, PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste said lead­er­ship of WASA was nev­er the is­sue. In­stead, he point­ed out oth­er con­cerns, in­clud­ing un­der­fund­ing and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ences.

“WASA’s an­ti­quat­ed, ever-fail­ing pipelines that sub­ject cus­tomers to reg­u­lar dis­rup­tion in their ser­vice due to rup­ture; the lack of in­vest­ment in ad­di­tion­al stor­age/reser­voirs to af­ford con­ti­nu­ity of ad­e­quate ser­vice dur­ing the dry sea­son; the un­der­fund­ing of main­te­nance; the fail­ure to me­ter its cus­tomers due to un­der­fund­ing; and above all else, are the po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven projects where WASA’s is­sues are sub­or­di­nat­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the whims and fan­cy of its po­lit­i­cal mas­ters,” he not­ed.

“Need­less to men­tion, there is a lack of cor­re­la­tion be­tween the cost of pro­duc­ing wa­ter and the tar­iff charged. Now, if the com­ing on board of the new CEO re­solves those is­sues, then we can ex­pect im­prove­ments.

“If not, just like we have been go­ing through po­lice com­mis­sion­er af­ter po­lice com­mis­sion­er with no dis­cern­able change in deal­ing with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, the same will be true for WASA. In oth­er words, fail­ure to deal with WASA’s sys­temic is­sues will re­sult in the new CEO’s im­po­tence. It will be a case that the more things change, the more they re­main the same.”

Hal­l­i­day will take of­fice from No­vem­ber 1, re­plac­ing Kelvin Ro­main, who has been act­ing CEO for the past two years.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion shad­ow Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath is won­der­ing why WASA re­fused to be trans­par­ent on its re­cruit­ment process.

He said WASA asked for three ex­ten­sions af­ter he filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest in June but is yet to re­veal de­tails, in­clud­ing the CEO’s re­mu­ner­a­tion and who will fill the oth­er nine man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions.

“While the Op­po­si­tion has no is­sue with any Cari­com na­tion­al or any oth­er per­son out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­ply­ing for the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, the ap­point­ment of Mr Hal­l­i­day is cloud­ed in se­cre­cy,” he said.

“I do not un­der­stand why af­ter three months, WASA is still re­fus­ing to an­swer, see­ing that these will be the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for the day-to-day man­age­ment and the re­struc­tur­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has been talk­ing about over the last four to five years.”

Padarath said he is giv­ing WASA un­til 8 am to­day to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion or fur­ther ac­tion may be tak­en.

He al­so wants to know what is hap­pen­ing with the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion rate re­view of WASA.