NEW WASA CEO TO SEND HOME 3,000 WORKERS

THE Water and Sewerage Authority’s (WASA) incoming Chief Executive Officer Keithroy Halliday has an urgent mandate to slash the annual $1.6 billion taxpayer subsidy.

Halliday’s first major job is to implement an official restructuring report, a key component of which is sending home some 3,000 of the 5,100 workers.

The mass retrenchment would affect all employee levels.

Several of the 426 managers in the lopsided structure would be laid off and others reassigned with lower salaries and reduced benefits.

Halliday has been briefed on streamlining labour and other costs, improving efficiency, and boosting water supply.

He has been handed the 185-page report of a Cabinet Sub-Committee, which called WASA “dysfunctional in its entirety,” and called for widespread changes.

Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales has said the authority’s top management is “grossly overstaffed.”

The Cabinet report said the leadership is “exceedingly top-heavy and possesses an injudiciously long chain of command.”

The report stated that WASA’s organisational structure is “complex, confusing and does not support a consistent logic.”

Halliday’s assignment is pressing since Finance Minister Colm Imbert is expected to subsidise WASA with no more than $1 billion in the next fiscal year, beginning October 1.

Imbert granted just under $1 billion in his 2023-24 Budget.

But when the authority ran into the red, he coughed up a further $522 million in the mid-year supplementary budget, delivered on June 7.

WASA accounts for two-third of the operating deficit in the country’s public utilities.

Apart from labour costs, WASA pays large sums to suppliers, contractors, landlords, security companies and others.

The authority pays around $40 million a year on road rehabilitation.

When WASA was restructured in 1999, its optimal workforce was 1,763 employees.

But the utility agency soon became bloated with political appointees.

Gonzales said there is “institutional corruption.”

The Public Services Association and National Workers’ Union are expected to challenge the retrenchments.

Under Halliday’s watch, WASA is likely to implement increased water rates and tariffs which it has sought with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

The Government has been pushing for higher charges to consumers to reduce the annual subsidies to WASA.

Collecting millions of dollars from bad-paying industrial, commercial and household customers is another task facing Halliday.

Imbert has stressed the challenges in funding WASA, Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission, other deficit State agencies, and the fuel subsidy.

That crisis is expected to worsen with the declining economy.

Halliday, who was born in St. Kitts-Nevis, is coming to WASA from Barbados Water Authority, where he was Acting CEO for seven years.

When he takes up the job on November 1, he will lead a new nine-member management team.

While a financial turnaround is critical to WASA, its new boss would be judged by consumers on the efficiency of the water supply.

Despite years of promises, thousands of nationals, especially in rural communities, often go for days without a pipe-borne supply.

Fed-up consumers mount occasional public protests.

One informed official in the water sector quipped: “Halliday must know that his job at WASA will be no holiday.”