Gail Alexan­der

High­er qual­i­ty stan­dards on road restora­tion work are be­ing de­mand­ed by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty - and both con­trac­tors and em­ploy­ees could pay a price down the line if this isn’t met.

This was the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by WASA chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga when man­age­ment ap­peared be­fore a Par­lia­ment Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture) head­ed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemul last Thurs­day.

Teemul asked about road restora­tion, which he not­ed has been an is­sue of con­cern af­ter WASA re­ceived a re­duced al­lo­ca­tion of $341 mil­lion in the 2022 Bud­get. This will im­pact the util­i­ty com­pa­ny by re­duc­ing con­tract work by 50 per cent and road restora­tion work by a sim­i­lar amount.

WASA Op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor Shar­i­fa Ali said the road restora­tion al­lo­ca­tion was re­duced by two per cent and such work con­tin­ues to be a pri­or­i­ty, in­clud­ing us­ing in­ter­nal and ag­gre­gate equip­ment and labour. Road restora­tion ca­pac­i­ty has been dou­bled to in­clude some con­tract labour to cov­er more is­sues in com­mu­ni­ties re­quir­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion, Ali said.

She added that WASA is forg­ing re­la­tion­ships and work­ing close­ly with the Works Min­istry and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to ad­dress road restora­tion. On com­ple­tion of leaks, road restora­tion is be­ing done im­me­di­ate­ly al­so, she not­ed.

Nan­ga said WASA has $16m for road restora­tion and some $13m more is be­ing re­quest­ed in the mid-year re­view for its pro­grammes.

He said WASA is now in process of do­ing Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures (SOP) for con­trac­tors for road restora­tion and there will be qual­i­ty con­trol com­po­nents in con­tracts for road restora­tion. Nan­ga added the the com­pa­ny is look­ing at all con­trac­tors to en­sure they have ex­per­tise.

“We must be 100 per cent sat­is­fied be­fore in­voic­es are done. If we find it lack­ing in any way, the con­trac­tor will be made to pay for re­me­di­al ac­tion to en­sure the work is at a sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­el,” he added.

In­ter­nal­ly with­in the au­thor­i­ty, WASA is al­so in­tro­duc­ing the qual­i­ty el­e­ment which will see projects be­ing in­spect­ed be­fore pay­ment. WASA will have su­per­vis­ers in the field and if that’s not done, train­ing pro­grammes will be in­sti­tut­ed. If peo­ple don’t per­form well, cor­rec­tive ac­tion will be tak­en. How­ev­er, he added that if they’re still not per­form­ing to the lev­el WASA re­quires, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion will be pur­sued.

Nan­ga said the cur­rent board wasn’t run­ning things from the board­room but was al­so go­ing out to see what is hap­pen­ing and some board mem­bers are lend­ing their ex­per­tise. He said some mem­bers had over­sight of cer­tain projects and oth­ers are on the “ground” to en­sure com­pli­ance.

WASA’s al­so de­vel­op­ing a ten­der for pro­vi­sion of an is­land­wide call sys­tem, in­clud­ing an App and de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of calls which will be fil­tered to the rel­e­vant WASA area of­fices the calls per­tain to.

WASA man­age­ment was grilled on and clar­i­fied is­sues re­gard­ing a 2010 con­tract in­volv­ing Desla­cott.

JSC mem­ber Anil Roberts sparred briefly with fel­low JSC mem­ber Nigel de Fre­itas when Roberts in­di­cat­ed that Nan­ga was giv­ing “hearsay” in a re­ply. De Fre­itas not­ed where the in­for­ma­tion came from. But Roberts told mem­bers not to in­terupt him, as he hadn’t done so in their sub­mis­sions.