Ripping form on WASA

THE theatricality of the moment was not lost on anyone when the Prime Minister tore up a copy of the Water and Sewerage Authority's (WASA) transformation plan devised by the previous government.

The action was clearly a nod of solidarity to the unions representing public servants that supported the UNC on the campaign trail and a pointed signal to workers that the UNC-led "people's government" would preserve jobs instead of cutting them.

The theatre around the pointed rejection of the WASA transformation plan has triggered a rather unhelpful round of finger-pointing.

Former public utilities minister Marvin Gonzalez heatedly responded to the rejection of the plan he had been driving to completion for more than two years, arguing that the abandoned restructuring strategy would have saved $43 million annually, instead of the $30 million promised by the Prime Minister.

Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath fired back, accusing Mr Gonzalez of presiding over a bloated management structure that costs the utility $74 million annually.

WASA has not benefited from decades of being used as a point of political leverage. The utility is clearly overstaffed and in need of greater emphasis on real-world efficiency improvements.

In the six weeks that he held the job, former public utilities minister Colm Imbert continued to insist that there would be no increase in water rates, but it remains to be seen what fresh approaches a clear-eyed, post-election assessment of the situation at WASA will inspire.

What's been needed at WASA for far too long is sharper thinking about what the utility is doing, how it can improve a staggering loss of water on its ageing lines estimated to be half of the potable water that's pumped from its wells and reservoirs.

The authority's new CEO, Keithroy Halliday, is not required to join the exodus of the utility's state-appointed leadership and his presence as a subject-matter professional should be engaged positively by the new government as an asset, not a liability.

He has correctly understood that the authority is in serious debt, the red ink reaching $3.3 billion by 2019, and acknowledged that the problems it faces demand long-term, complex solutions. It's impossible to have cheap water, a reliable water retention and delivery service and coddled workers. That axis of doom has been the rot at the heart of WASA's failures.

Mr Halliday noted in January that improving delivery gives the authority better grounds to bill and generate revenue.

Mrs Persad-Bissessar may not want to cut the unionised-employee roster at the authority, but she must press Mr Padarath and Mr Halliday to pursue strategies of strategic retraining and upskilling that make better use of the authority's human resource asset, the key to addressing many of the challenges that WASA faces.