SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

In a shock­ing move yes­ter­day, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Jee­van Joseph, was sent on leave, five months af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed to the top post at the state-owned com­pa­ny.

It’s un­clear why Joseph was sent on leave.

But sources at WASA stat­ed that the news sent shock­waves through­out the util­i­ty com­pa­ny.

In Joseph’s ab­sence, Dain Ma­haraj, the act­ing di­rec­tor of cor­po­rate ser­vices at WASA, will act as CEO.

Ma­haraj al­so serves as chair­man of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

In June, Joseph was ap­point­ed to the post un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing the fir­ing of Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, a St Kitts-born pro­fes­sion­al who earned a salary of $100,000 per month, plus perks, as CEO.

It was re­port­ed that Joseph could have re­ceived a sim­i­lar com­pen­sa­tion pack­age.

Hal­l­i­day and nine top ex­ec­u­tives of the WASA board were axed mere weeks af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress as­sumed of­fice. Joseph had a ten-man ex­ec­u­tive team in var­i­ous po­si­tions tak­ing charge of the au­thor­i­ty.

He brought with him more than two decades of tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence in the util­i­ties sec­tor, hav­ing built a dis­tin­guished ca­reer at the au­thor­i­ty since join­ing in 2000.

In his new role, Joseph was ex­pect­ed to pri­ori­tise eq­ui­table wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion, in­fra­struc­ture re­silience, and ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

Up­on tak­ing up the high-lev­el po­si­tion, Joseph said he was ho­n­oured to lead WASA at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.

“My fo­cus will be on col­lab­o­rat­ing with stake­hold­ers, lever­ag­ing in­no­va­tion, and en­sur­ing that every­body in every com­mu­ni­ty re­ceives fair and sus­tain­able ac­cess to pipe-borne wa­ter. To­geth­er, we will build a stronger, more re­spon­sive WASA,” he said when in­stalled.

At the time of his in­stal­la­tion, Joseph, a hold­er of a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, was pur­su­ing an MBA at An­glia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty.

Joseph has served in sev­er­al crit­i­cal roles, in­clud­ing Man­ag­er of Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices for Waste­water Sys­tems.

In that post, he led the de­vel­op­ment of stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, as­set man­age­ment strate­gies, and tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ini­tia­tives to im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Joseph al­so played a lead­er­ship role in ma­jor pipeline in­fra­struc­ture projects across Trinidad, in­clud­ing the Navet and Hol­lis Trunk Mains projects.

Last night, Joseph and Ma­haraj failed to an­swer calls from Guardian Me­dia.

They al­so did not re­spond to What­sApp mes­sages.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath al­so read a What­sApp mes­sage from Guardian Me­dia re­gard­ing Joseph be­ing sent on leave, but he did not re­ply.