Work­ers at the cash-strapped Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) have agreed to take a pay cut in a bid to save the flag­ging state com­pa­ny from go­ing bel­ly up.

This was one of sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions WASA em­ploy­ees put for­ward to their chair­man and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy as the wa­ter com­pa­ny moves to re­duce spend­ing.

WASA has 4,828 em­ploy­ees and 426 man­agers

The re­port of the Cab­i­net-sub com­mit­tee in­to the op­er­a­tions of WASA found that the util­i­ty was “ex­ceed­ing­ly top-heavy, dys­func­tion­al, un­pro­duc­tive” and a drain on tax­pay­ers.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les un­der whose purview WASA falls told Guardian Me­dia the re­spons­es Sealy re­ceived from some WASA staff had been more than favourable.

“I am telling you all is not lost at WASA. The em­ploy­ees in­side of WASA... they know what has to be done to turn around the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Gon­za­les said the work­ers know where the leak­ages and haem­or­rhag­ing have been tak­ing place.

Sealy’s bul­letin re­mind­ed the em­ploy­ees that as an emerg­ing na­tion, WASA which ser­vices the pub­lic has to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for run­ning its af­fairs.

“We no longer have op­tions,” Sealy told the work­ers.

He stat­ed that his first ini­tia­tive is “cost re­duc­tion, rev­enue col­lec­tion and reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion pro­gramme.”

In terms of cost re­duc­tion, Sealy in­vit­ed all em­ploy­ees to make rec­om­men­da­tions for ways in which WASA can re­duce its spend­ing. “In this re­gard, there are no sa­cred cows. All sug­ges­tions are wel­come whether it per­tains to ex­ec­u­tive salaries, lease costs or even elec­tric­i­ty and tele­phone costs or rental costs,” Sealy wrote.

Gon­za­les said the work­ers’ rec­om­men­da­tions, which he saw two weeks ago, blew his mind.

“They rec­om­mend­ed a re­duc­tion in their salaries...the bonus­es and some of the al­lowances that they cur­rent­ly en­joy.”

The re­port, which will be laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, stat­ed that the prac­tice of over­time is en­dem­ic and has emerged as a stan­dard op­er­at­ing prac­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ment which has the high­est at­trib­ut­able per­cent­age of over­time cost.

Based on WASA’s col­lec­tive agree­ments with the three trade unions—the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) and Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion, its work­ers are paid 27 al­lowances in­clud­ing dou­ble and triple time.

Be­tween 2016 and 2020, WASA em­ploy­ees racked up a $468.3 mil­lion over­time bill.

For the same pe­ri­od, WASA al­so paid out $17 mil­lion in bonus­es and $7 mil­lion in gra­tu­ities.

The util­i­ty al­so forked out $142 mil­lion in the rental of ve­hi­cles from 2016 to 2020.

Gon­za­les said there were oth­er as­pects the em­ploy­ees be­lieved WASA could save on.

“Imag­ine em­ploy­ees telling you that the PSA and the NUGFW, who are oc­cu­py­ing build­ings in­side of WASA free of charge, it is time to charge them rent. That came from the em­ploy­ees. I was not even aware that these unions were oc­cu­py­ing build­ings in­side of WASA rent-free.”

Asked if this was an op­tion they may look at, Gon­za­les replied “that is some­thing that man­age­ment will have to deal with be­cause re­mem­ber it is man­agers who have al­lowed that to hap­pen. All these ar­eas and bad prac­tices that de­vel­oped over the years ought to be re­versed. But you need a strong team of man­agers who are pre­pared to take some of those dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions.”