Shal­iza Has­sanali

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Four months af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­scribed the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s (WASA) man­age­ment as con­vo­lut­ed, in­ef­fec­tive and un­ac­count­able, there are plans in the pipeline to cut its man­age­r­i­al staff.

Of the 426 man­agers cur­rent­ly on WASA’s pay­roll, Gon­za­les has con­firmed that an un­known num­ber of its man­age­r­i­al staff will be sent home in the com­ing weeks.

WASA will seek fund­ing from an in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing agency to pay the af­fect­ed man­agers their sev­er­ance which is ex­pect­ed to costs tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars.

The news comes weeks af­ter a re­port of the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to re­view the op­er­a­tions of WASA found that the cash-strapped or­gan­i­sa­tion had be­come un­pro­duc­tive, un­wieldy, cor­rupt, un­re­spon­sive and over­staffed, while its ef­fi­cien­cy was sac­ri­ficed for po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age.

The move to down­size its man­agers is all part of the au­thor­i­ty’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

“Of course, yes, I would not mince words to say that there wouldn’t be a shake-up. There must be a fur­ther shake-up...a man­age­r­i­al shake-up. You can­not move for­ward with a man­age­ment team of 426 man­agers. It is un­work­able. It is un­ten­able. When we in­ter­viewed some of the se­nior ex­ec­u­tives in WASA they com­plained about that struc­ture. As a mat­ter of fact, they told us in no un­cer­tain terms that the man­age­ment struc­ture is un­work­able and has con­tributed to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia in a face-to-face in­ter­view at his min­istry’s head of­fice in Wood­brook.

Gon­za­les said WASA must be able to stream­line its man­age­r­i­al staff to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy and bet­ter ser­vice to its cus­tomers.

Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture re­quires four lev­els of man­age­ment

He ad­mit­ted that WASA’s lead­er­ship has be­come ex­ceed­ing­ly top-heavy and its chain of com­mand in­ju­di­cious­ly and long.

“No oth­er wa­ter com­pa­ny in the world has so many lay­ers of man­age­ment. There must be cuts at the man­age­r­i­al lev­el to en­sure you have a prop­er man­age­ment team in place and to hold those un­der their charge ac­count­able,” he in­sist­ed.

The re­port stat­ed that Cab­i­net in 1999 ap­proved a “four-lev­el man­age­r­i­al staff” struc­ture for WASA, con­sist­ing 172 em­ploy­ees.

The four lev­els are a CEO, com­pris­ing six di­rec­tors who are sup­port­ed by sev­en gen­er­al man­agers, 32 man­agers and 126 su­per­vi­sors in 17 ma­jor di­vi­sions.

How­ev­er, WASA’s cur­rent man­age­ment struc­ture has eight lev­els—com­pris­ing eight ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment di­rec­tors, 19 ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment heads, 32 ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment (se­nior man­agers), 88 de­part­men­tal man­agers, 25 as­sis­tant man­agers, 35 sec­tion man­agers, 23 unit man­agers and 126 su­per­vi­sors—bring­ing the to­tal cadre of man­agers to 426, which rep­re­sents a “248 per cent in ex­cess of the ap­proved struc­ture,” the re­port re­vealed.

The re­port fur­ther point­ed out that the cur­rent struc­ture is rel­a­tive­ly hor­i­zon­tal with a very nar­row span of con­trol.

“This is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by the six lev­els of man­age­ment ex­clu­sive of the su­per­vi­so­ry lev­el. The in­or­di­nate large num­bers of deputy as­sis­tants and unit man­agers that has crept in­to the sys­tem chal­lenge both staff and man­age­ment to co­or­di­nate ac­tiv­i­ties and projects while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­her­ing to the lines of au­thor­i­ty. WASA’s lead­er­ship hi­er­ar­chy is now twice that of the stan­dard or­gan­i­sa­tion prac­tice. The cur­rent struc­ture does not pro­vide for ef­fec­tive con­trol, su­per­vi­sion and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” the re­port stat­ed.

It fur­ther re­vealed that the lim­it­ed span of con­trol per­me­ates to all lev­els of the struc­ture, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for WASA to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age its staff, af­fairs and de­liv­er on its man­date.

To change this, Gon­za­les said WASA’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy will put to­geth­er a man­age­ment team that will be re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the trans­for­ma­tion process and crack­down on the au­thor­i­ty’s de­cline.

Cost­ly sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages

Ques­tioned where WASA will ob­tain cash to pay the man­agers sev­er­ance ben­e­fits, Gon­za­les said they will ask in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing agen­cies “for as­sis­tance to fi­nance sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages af­ter the au­dit is com­plet­ed and the ap­pro­pri­ate staff lev­el is set­tled. This will save the coun­try bil­lions of dol­lars and this sav­ing will be put to­wards im­prov­ing the lev­els of ser­vice across the coun­try by the use of tech­nol­o­gy and oth­er mod­ern sys­tems.”

Pressed if WASA had ap­proached the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) for fund­ing, Gon­za­les said, “we are speak­ing with the IDB now and they are will­ing and anx­ious to as­sist. They be­lieve we are on the right track, fi­nal­ly.”

The sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages, Gon­za­les said will come with a heavy price.

“It will be cost­ly. That is the price we have to pay for bad man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. WASA was like a ship lost in a vast ocean of cor­rup­tion, mis­man­age­ment and nepo­tism. And those whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty it was to ad­dress the prob­lem shied away from it by telling the coun­try it was me­ter­ing and leak­ing pipelines are the re­al prob­lems. To­day, tax­pay­ers have to spend hun­dreds of mil­lions to save bil­lions.”

Man­agers on month-to-month con­tracts re­ceiv­ing bonus­es

Gon­za­les spoke about some of the man­agers whose three-year con­tracts end­ed in 2016.

These man­agers were placed on month-to-month con­tracts and have been the re­cip­i­ents of bonus­es and giv­en sub­stan­tive po­si­tions with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“So that is a night­mare that we have dis­cov­ered in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Gon­za­les said he ex­pects the three unions rep­re­sent­ing WASA em­ploy­ees to fight back.

He said the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee which he chaired con­clud­ed that there was an “un­healthy and in­ces­tu­ous re­la­tion­ship” be­tween the unions and WASA’s man­age­ment which posed a se­ri­ous gov­er­nance prob­lem to the op­er­a­tion of the au­thor­i­ty.”

For months, Gon­za­les said suc­ces­sive man­age­ment teams have proven pow­er­less to the union’s en­croach­ment on the au­thor­i­ty’s right to man­age, di­rect and own its op­er­a­tional af­fairs while there has been no demon­stra­ble ev­i­dence of ur­gent and de­ci­sive ac­tion be­ing tak­en on mul­ti­ple fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Apart from the close re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment shares with the unions, Gon­za­les said the is­sue of ad­di­tion­al com­mut­ed over­time was al­so cause for con­cern.

PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, by let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 21, 2014, re­quest­ed pay­ment of ad­di­tion­al com­mut­ed over­time hours to an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions man­ag­er at WASA, who is a se­nior PSA mem­ber.

In the let­ter, Duke jus­ti­fied the re­quest for over­time.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said he was not sur­prised by Duke’s re­quest which he de­scribed as scan­dalous.

“There­fore, de­ci­sions are be­ing made, or were made rather, against the best in­ter­est of the au­thor­i­ty that con­sti­tut­ed, as far as I am con­cerned, a breach of fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that mem­bers of man­age­ment ought to have with the au­thor­i­ty as well as un­der­min­ing the pub­lic’s in­ter­est,” Gon­za­les said.

When the pre­vi­ous WASA board tried to stop the man­ag­er’s com­mut­ed over­time, Gon­za­les said he sued WASA but lost the mat­ter at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

“So where do we draw the line be­tween your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a man­ag­er? Where do we draw the line with re­spect to your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a union rep­re­sen­ta­tive? Where do you draw the line with re­spect to your fidu­cia­ry du­ties?”

The re­port al­so un­cov­ered the use of ve­hi­cles paid for by WASA that were as­signed to em­ploy­ees and unions of­fi­cials who col­lect­ed trav­el­ling al­lowances—a case of dou­ble-dip­ping.

He said a lot of these arrange­ments took place be­tween 2010 and 2015 un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Sweet­heart deals

“Even those col­lec­tive agree­ments that were signed. You would be sur­prised to know that those pay­ments you are re­fer­ring to are pay­ments that our col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments did not cater for. So, they were made out­side of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments. The ve­hi­cle al­lowances...the over­time pay­ments.”

Gon­za­les held the view that some of WASA’s man­agers had “sold out to the unions. They sac­ri­ficed the ef­fi­cien­cy of the or­gan­i­sa­tion to the unions. There were deals be­tween man­age­ment and the unions.”

Those sweet­heart deals were stopped by the pre­vi­ous board.

WASA al­so paid rent for PSA and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) ve­hi­cles to per­form du­ties that had no con­nec­tion with the au­thor­i­ty.

Phone bills for some of its work­ers who were on full-time union du­ties were al­so paid for by WASA.

Gon­za­les said what took place at WASA was out­ra­geous and lu­di­crous.

Gon­za­les: Every­body was just eat­ing a food and hav­ing

a good time.

“Be­cause every­body was just eat­ing food...every­body was just hav­ing a good time. It was just wild­ness tak­ing place in the or­gan­i­sa­tion against the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of this coun­try and cost­ing this coun­try mil­lions of dol­lars.”

An­oth­er is­sue the re­port raised was that the unions had been pro­vid­ing goods and ser­vices to WASA.

This led PSA’s pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke to ad­mit that his wife’s firm Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies Ltd had been the re­cip­i­ent of sev­er­al WASA con­tracts.

Be­tween 2014 to 2016, WASA paid Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing $9.8 mil­lion while the com­pa­ny is owed $3 mil­lion.

Gon­za­les said bad work ethics, cor­rup­tion and wrong­do­ing have been ac­cept­ed as the norm in WASA.

On the heels of the sub com­mit­tee’s re­port came an­oth­er shock­ing doc­u­ment—a 2016 In­ter­nal Au­dit and Com­pli­ance De­part­ment Sum­ma­ry re­port which ac­cused a se­nior WASA man­ag­er of sev­en al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

It found that WASA paid $1.1 mil­lion in over­time to six PSA of­fi­cials be­tween 2013 to 2016, while union of­fi­cials of the NUGFW al­so col­lect­ed retroac­tive pay­ments of fore­gone over­time of $726,000.

The man­ag­er was al­so ac­cused of act­ing in breach of the au­thor­i­ty’s man­date to re­duce staff be­tween 2014 and 2015 to the con­di­tions of a loan with the IDB which es­tab­lished fund­ing to the tune of $360 mil­lion for a Vol­un­tary Em­ploy­ee Sep­a­ra­tion pro­gramme.

In­stead, dur­ing this pe­ri­od, WASA hired 1,474 new em­ploy­ees, some of whom did not have na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, were not in­ter­viewed, pos­sessed no qual­i­fi­ca­tions and lacked prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion.

This led to WASA’s over­all salary cost to in­crease from $130 mil­lion to $157 mil­lion.

While WASA’s cur­rent work­force is 4,828, the re­port stat­ed the State-owned com­pa­ny has been op­er­at­ing by more than 3,152 em­ploy­ees.

In­di­vid­u­als paid $15,000 bribes to se­cure WASA jobs

“It tells the lev­el of cor­rup­tion and lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty at WASA. Per­sons were brought in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion by the hun­dreds not sat­is­fy­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions re­quire­ments...not hav­ing prop­er job de­scrip­tions, con­tracts of em­ploy­ment, not hav­ing their na­tion­al ID,” Gon­za­les dis­closed.

For years, Gon­za­les said staff lev­els at WASA had been fab­ri­cat­ed.

“So, per­sons were il­le­gal­ly brought in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceiv­ing a salary and not be­ing qual­i­fied for those po­si­tions. But I have re­ceived anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion that a num­ber of those per­sons paid to be em­ployed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion up to $15,000... to be em­ployed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion...paid per­sons with­in WASA to be em­ployed with­out hav­ing the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions. There are a num­ber of man­agers who are em­ployed in man­age­ment po­si­tions who are not in align­ment with their qual­i­fi­ca­tions so the whole thing is in dis­ar­ray...up­side down.”

The bribes of­fered were to se­cure low-lev­el jobs.

“So, the board, Cab­i­net and min­istry did not have a close as to how many per­sons were tru­ly en­gaged in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Gon­za­les said WASA start­ed to haem­or­rhage due to some of the il­le­gal things hap­pen­ing with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Every year, WASA pumps $2.5 bil­lion in­to WASA which gen­er­ates lit­tle or no re­turns.

Though the man­ag­er was fired in 2017 for his wrong­do­ings, Gon­za­les said he was left un­touched.

“Why wasn’t civ­il ac­tion tak­en against him? Why wasn’t this mat­ter re­ferred to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice back then? The re­port has been in ex­is­tence since 2016. Again, it points to gov­er­nance and man­age­ment prob­lems with the or­gan­i­sa­tion. So, you can con­nect the dots.”

Politi­cians blamed for WASA’s de­cline

Gon­za­les blamed some of his pre­de­ces­sors for WASA’s poor state of af­fairs.

“You have to be laser-fo­cused on the is­sues and you have to be pre­pared to lay blame where blame is right­ly due. I al­so lay blame and cast blame on a lot of politi­cians who played the game by get­ting peo­ple in­side the or­gan­i­sa­tion who they damn well knew was not qual­i­fied to take up some of these po­si­tions. The on­ly rea­son why they are in the or­gan­i­sa­tion is be­cause of their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance and they are not do­ing what they are be­ing paid to do... and some of these em­ploy­ees are the worst em­ploy­ees in the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­cause they be­lieve they got their job be­cause of the sup­port of politi­cians and there­fore they should re­main there.”

Guardian Me­dia sent Duke a What­sapp mes­sage re­gard­ing his com­mut­ed over­time re­quest.

Duke, how­ev­er, read the mes­sage but failed to re­spond.