An­na-Lisa Paul

One month af­ter it was re­vealed that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had paid a whop­ping $468.3 mil­lion in over­time dur­ing 2016 to 2020, some of which was not ac­tu­al­ly earned by those who re­ceived the pay­ments, an in­ter­nal memo has been is­sued to man­agers that from to­day (April 1), a Com­mut­ed Over­time Log Form must be com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly on a month­ly ba­sis in or­der for the con­tin­u­a­tion of this pay­ment.

In the memo dat­ed March 24, act­ing Hu­man Re­sources Di­rec­tor May Ann Di­az ad­vised, “The cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion re­quires that greater em­pha­sis be placed on re­duc­ing our month­ly ex­pen­di­ture. Cur­rent­ly, there are two ar­eas which con­tin­ue to re­main ar­eas of grave con­cern, specif­i­cal­ly over­time-as-worked and com­mut­ed over­time.”

The Hu­man Re­sources Di­vi­sion had pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued mem­o­ran­da on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions back in De­cem­ber 2017 and May 2020, re­in­forc­ing the pol­i­cy that “all em­ploy­ees who are in re­ceipt of Com­mut­ed Over­time Al­lowance (COT) must ac­count for the work ex­e­cut­ed be­yond the nor­mal work­day us­ing the Com­mut­ed Over­time Log Form.”

The move comes af­ter a se­ries of Guardian Me­dia ex­pos­es high­light­ing the fi­nan­cial drain over­time pay­ments and oth­er poor prac­tices were cre­at­ing for the util­i­ty and which was de­tailed in an au­dit re­port dat­ing back to 2016.

Last month, Guardian Me­dia pub­lished the con­tents of a 2016 au­dit re­port, com­piled by WASA’s Le­gal De­part­ment, which found that some $1,142,609.15 in ex­ces­sive com­mut­ed over­time (COT) was paid to six work­ers who were of­fi­cials of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2013 to Ju­ly 2016.

Re­gard­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s con­tin­u­ing high over­time costs, Di­az stressed in the memo that all em­ploy­ees re­ceiv­ing com­mut­ed over­time must ac­count for the work done.

“This is to en­sure that there is em­pir­i­cal da­ta to sup­port the con­tin­ued pay­ment of the al­lowance, that it is eco­nom­i­cal­ly pru­dent to do so, and that it is a worth­while in­vest­ment con­sid­er­ing the crit­i­cal­i­ty of the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by per­sons who are in re­ceipt of COT Al­lowance,” Di­az wrote.

The log form is de­signed to cap­ture de­tails of over­time hours worked and the du­ties per­formed dur­ing these hours. They are to be sub­mit­ted by the third work­ing day of each month elec­tron­i­cal­ly and as Di­az in­di­cat­ed, this mea­sure is in­tend­ed to man­age WASA’s over­time ex­pen­di­ture down­wards.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has pre­vi­ous­ly re­ferred to the ex­or­bi­tant over­time bill at WASA and some of the ques­tion­able means by which it is be­ing logged and paid out as, “a scan­dalous and shame­ful state of af­fairs.”

A Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the op­er­a­tions of WASA, chaired by Gon­za­les, last month sub­mit­ted a re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on how the cash-strapped WASA could be trans­formed. De­tails of the over­time pay­ment sce­nario are re­vealed in the re­port.

The re­port stat­ed that in 2016, WASA com­menced sev­er­al cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives which re­sult­ed in a sav­ings of $64.7 mil­lion by the end of Sep­tem­ber 2019. Among the ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en was a re­duc­tion in bulk pur­chas­es; over­time from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a shift sys­tem and the ro­ta­tion of su­per­vi­sors; use of tech­nol­o­gy; lim­it­ing trav­el; and re-ne­go­ti­a­tion of lease arrange­ments for ve­hi­cles and prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, the com­mit­tee had point­ed out that “one ma­jor area in which man­age­ment con­trols are ur­gent­ly re­quired is the area of over­time and that over­time-re­lat­ed costs con­tribute to the au­thor­i­ty’s in­abil­i­ty to ful­fil its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions on a month­ly ba­sis.”

In May 2016, the in­ter­nal WASA au­dit re­port re­vealed that an over­time man­age­ment com­mit­tee was formed and its man­date was to analyse the his­toric da­ta of over­time lev­els and re­duce costs.

The over­time com­mit­tee agreed that for the year 2017, “the over­time for month­ly paid staff (com­mut­ed) would be $25,471,365 while the over­time for dai­ly-rat­ed staff would be in the vicin­i­ty of $20,069,934.”

How­ev­er, their re­port not­ed that this fig­ure was not even­tu­al­ly achieved.

“The ac­tu­al fig­ure for year 2017 as record­ed pre­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent out­turn than what was pro­posed, with over­time for dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees reach­ing $39.2 mil­lion and com­mut­ed over­time record­ing a high of $51 mil­lion.”

The re­port fur­ther re­vealed that “in both cas­es, the ac­tu­al pay­ment was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 per cent more than pro­ject­ed.”

Be­tween 2016 and 2020, the re­port showed that WASA “ex­pend­ed $207,469,234 in over­time for its dai­ly paid em­ploy­ees and $260,928,512 (com­mut­ed) for its month­ly paid staff, for a to­tal of $468,397,746 mil­lion or an over­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $94 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.”

WASA has 4,828 em­ploy­ees but this does not in­clude the 47 mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team or the 80 staff re­lat­ed to var­i­ous pro­grammes and projects.