SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Act­ing Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) CEO Sher­land Shep­pard has been sus­pend­ed for one month, af­ter he was found cul­pa­ble in omit­ting the names of two com­mer­cial cus­tomers who were to be pub­lished by the au­thor­i­ty as bad pay­ing cus­tomers.

The cus­tomers, who are in­volved in the en­ter­tain­ment/recre­ation­al sec­tor in West Trinidad, owe the au­thor­i­ty close to $1 mil­lion in ar­rears.

The names of these two com­pa­nies and their own­ers should have been pub­lished in the print me­dia last month for out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to WASA but were even­tu­al­ly omit­ted from WASA’s list­ing of delin­quent cus­tomers.

The even­tu­al ad­ver­tise­ments which were pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers by the au­thor­i­ty iden­ti­fied 28 busi­ness­es and their own­er/s lo­cat­ed in the north­west, north­east, cen­tral, south­west and south­east and asked that they con­tact WASA’s area ac­count rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­tween March 9 to 23 on “mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.”

These delin­quent cus­tomers col­lec­tive­ly owe WASA $5 mil­lion in ar­rears.

News of Shep­pard’s sus­pen­sion was an­nounced this week fol­low­ing a two-week in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a mem­ber of WASA’s Hu­man Re­sources com­mit­tee.

The find­ing of the probe, an in­side source at WASA told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, came af­ter “the board ap­proved a list of names of cer­tain com­mer­cial cus­tomers to be pub­lished who are ow­ing WASA large sums of mon­ey. Two names were left out, con­trary to the in­struc­tions of the board and when ques­tioned, he (Shep­pard) could not prof­fer a rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion as to why this hap­pened.”

Yes­ter­day, a re­lease from WASA pro­vid­ed an up­date on Shep­pard’s sus­pen­sion.

The re­lease stat­ed that fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the au­thor­i­ty, it was de­ter­mined that Shep­pard “failed to en­sure that a de­ci­sion of the board was ful­ly com­plied with by the au­thor­i­ty. Giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of this mat­ter, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to sus­pend Mr Shep­pard for a pe­ri­od of one month.”

Three weeks ago, the board, chaired by Ravin­dra Nan­ga, took the de­ci­sion to sus­pend Shep­pard over a mat­ter which was de­scribed as sen­si­tive in na­ture.

Nan­ga kept the rea­son for Shep­pard’s sus­pen­sion close to his chest, ex­cept to say that he gave a two-week pe­ri­od to al­low for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be done.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so steered clear of the is­sue, stat­ing that he had to pro­tect the process and the of­fi­cials in­volved.

“I be­lieve the board of com­mis­sion­ers will al­ways act to pro­tect the in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty and the pub­lic in­ter­est so the mat­ter will be com­pe­tent­ly han­dled,” Gon­za­les stat­ed in a What­sapp mes­sage ear­li­er this month.

In the in­ter­im, the board ap­point­ed Kelvin Ro­main to act as CEO.

How­ev­er, the source stat­ed that the board was al­so un­hap­py with Shep­pard’s per­for­mance and grasp of crit­i­cal mat­ters con­cern­ing the man­age­ment of WASA, which was an­oth­er rea­son for his sus­pen­sion.

Fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of WASA’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor/CEO Dr Lennox Sealy last Ju­ly, Shep­pard was ap­point­ed to act as CEO af­ter a ma­jor shake-up of the au­thor­i­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment.

Sealy cit­ed per­son­al rea­sons for his ex­it.

Shep­pard served as a di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions at WASA for sev­er­al years be­fore be­ing pro­mot­ed to the top-lev­el post.

One of the man­dates of the ex­ec­u­tive team was to plan for the strate­gic de­vel­op­ment of the util­i­ty sec­tor and im­prove the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply to its 400,000 plus cus­tomers.

In the last sev­en years, WASA has ap­point­ed eight CEOs to man­age the cash strapped or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les of­fered no com­ment on Shep­pard’s month-long sus­pen­sion.