On the heels of the re­cent res­ig­na­tion of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor/chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Dr Lennox Sealy comes a ma­jor shake-up of the au­thor­i­ty's ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team—the en­tire team of sev­en peo­ple has been re­placed.

On Sat­ur­day, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at WASA were in­struct­ed not to al­low four of the for­mer di­rec­tors on­to its St Joseph com­pound.

The de­ci­sion to re­move the team was tak­en on Fri­day dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing by WASA's new­ly ap­point­ed chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga and his di­rec­tors, fol­low­ing Thurs­day's res­ig­na­tion of Sealy who cit­ed "per­son­al cir­cum­stances" for his sud­den de­par­ture. Sealy had met with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les who in­formed him that the Gov­ern­ment was dis­ap­point­ed and dis­sat­is­fied with the slow pace of WASA's trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise.

In a sur­prise move, Sher­land Shep­pard, a for­mer di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions for sev­er­al years, who was re­moved from that post about three months ago to work along­side Sealy, will lead the new ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team. The team com­pris­es five oth­er di­rec­tors—Shaira Ali-op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor, Giselle Spence-fi­nance di­rec­tor, Ron­nie Spencer-HR di­rec­tor, Natasha An­drews-cor­po­rate busi­ness ser­vices, Win­ston Drakes-cor­po­rate ser­vices.

The ap­pointee for the po­si­tion of cor­po­rate sec­re­tary will soon be de­ter­mined.

The new di­rec­tors who are em­ploy­ees of WASA will be is­sued let­ters of ap­point­ment on Mon­day and to­geth­er with Nan­ga will com­mence the trans­for­ma­tion and re­struc­tur­ing of WASA which is three months be­hind sched­ule.

In two months they will have to sub­mit a plan and re­port to Gon­za­les to chart a new way for­ward for WASA.

A WASA source said "this is clear­ly a strate­gic move by Gon­za­les and the board that sends a clear sig­nal that they are now shift­ing gears af­ter three months of dor­man­cy un­der Sealy.'

The min­is­ter, the source said, "has set clear time­lines from the start for the trans­for­ma­tion and is hold­ing of­fi­cials to those time­lines. This team has been man­dat­ed to put all their en­er­gies on work­ing with the board to get the ball rolling on WASA's re­struc­tur­ing and changeover."

The old ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team, ac­cord­ing to the WASA web­site, com­prised Alan Poon King-act­ing CEO, act­ing di­rec­tor cus­tomer care Sher­ry Du­mas-Hare­wood, act­ing di­rec­tor cor­po­rate ser­vices Al­win Browne, act­ing di­rec­tor of hu­man re­sources May Ann Di­az, act­ing di­rec­tor of fi­nance Rachelle Wilkie, act­ing di­rec­tor pro­grammes and change man­age­ment Denise Lee Sing Pereira and gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Dion Ab­dool. A source at WASA said the re­placed di­rec­tors will have to re­vert to their pre­vi­ous po­si­tions at the au­thor­i­ty.

When Sealy as­sumed the CEO/ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor posts in Feb­ru­ary, Poon King was re­moved as act­ing CEO and had to re­sume his pre­vi­ous post as di­rec­tor of cus­tomer ser­vices.

Two weeks ago, WASA sus­pend­ed one of its di­rec­tors over mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to its board.

WASA has com­menced an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged mis­con­duct.

Con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day, Gon­za­les of­fered no com­ment about the ma­jor reshuf­fle at the be­lea­guered com­pa­ny.