KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

It’s been a lit­tle over a month since St Kitts and Nevis na­tion­al Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day took over as head of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and he’s al­ready mak­ing big plans for the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­pli­er.

Yes­ter­day, Hal­l­i­day re­vealed that his main pri­or­i­ties in­clude en­sur­ing the de­liv­ery of wa­ter to cus­tomers on a 24-hour ba­sis and restor­ing pride in work­ers. Hal­l­i­day al­so wants to see WASA be­come in­de­pen­dent of gov­ern­ment cof­fers, though he says he knows this will not hap­pen this year or even next year.

In an in­ter­view at WASA’s Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, Pi­ar­co, he said: “I think what is im­por­tant right now is mak­ing sure that we can de­liv­er the wa­ter. Whether it is those ar­eas that are not get­ting wa­ter yet. Maybe, they’re get­ting wa­ter once a week, once every two weeks or what­ev­er the case may be, that is the pri­ma­ry fo­cus, and that will re­main the pri­ma­ry fo­cus pos­si­bly for the rest of the year.

“We can­not in 2025 as a wa­ter util­i­ty com­pa­ny for Trinidad and To­ba­go be say­ing that we are not yet ready, in that sense.”

While he did not want to di­vulge too much about WASA’s on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion process which land­ed him his new role, Hal­l­i­day con­firmed that the first two lev­els of man­age­ment have been ad­dressed.

He ad­mit­ted that some work­ers are con­cerned about their job se­cu­ri­ty, which he be­lieves are anx­i­eties that are nat­ur­al dur­ing a trans­for­ma­tion process. How­ev­er, he gave the as­sur­ance that their con­cerns would be ad­dressed, and he’s al­ready met with the rel­e­vant union.

“There are many in­stances of lit­tle is­sues that I think we could re­solve that we’re mov­ing quick­ly to see what we can do but it has to be a part and par­cel of a plan. We’re try­ing not to do things in a hap­haz­ard way and we’re try­ing to deal with things in a very struc­tured way. At the same time, com­mu­ni­cate as much as we can,” he said.

Em­ploy­ee is­sues aside, Hal­l­i­day ap­pealed to cus­tomers to con­serve wa­ter since it’s of­fi­cial­ly the dry sea­son in T&T. At present, three of the four reser­voirs are above av­er­age ca­pac­i­ty.

WASA yes­ter­day con­firmed as of Jan­u­ary 16, the Ca­roni/Are­na dam has 78.95 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. Hol­lis Reser­voir is at 97.52 per cent, Navet Reser­voir is at 94.14 per cent, and Hills­bor­ough Reser­voir is at 98.9 per cent.

Hal­l­i­day said the Ca­roni plant, which is the pri­ma­ry wa­ter source for north, cen­tral and south Trinidad, has been a bit slow­er to recharge due to the less-than-an­tic­i­pat­ed rain­fall.

catch­ment area.

Yes­ter­day, WASA al­so an­nounced that sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties will soon see re­lief as it launched its Wa­ter Sup­ply Im­prove­ment Project for the Wood­land and San Fran­cique ar­eas which is ex­pect­ed to bring re­lief to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9408 res­i­dents.

Hal­l­i­day was ap­point­ed CEO on De­cem­ber 1.

Kelvin Ro­main, now Di­rec­tor, Wa­ter Man­age­ment Ser­vice for the north­west re­gion, served as in­ter­im CEO.

In 2021, WASA’s chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga took over as CEO af­ter ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Lennox Sealy re­signed five months af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion. Sealy’s de­par­ture fol­lowed the sus­pen­sion of a se­nior di­rec­tor over mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to WASA’s board.

In 2022, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said WASA had 426 ex­ec­u­tive man­agers and the in­ten­tion was to cut it by 50 per cent, which equat­ed to 213 man­agers.

This led to the start of WASA’s trans­for­ma­tion process which saw Hal­l­i­day cho­sen for the po­si­tion, af­ter the pre­vi­ous CEO se­lect­ed, a Zim­bab­we na­tion­al, died last year.

Since tak­ing up his post, Hal­l­i­day has met with most of the staff, in­clud­ing work­ers in To­ba­go. When pressed about how those in­ter­ac­tions went, in­clud­ing what work­ers have been telling him, he said they have been open, hon­est and trans­par­ent.

Asked what he will do dif­fer­ent­ly as CEO, he said: “I think there’s a cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ence I’ve had where some of the is­sues we’re con­front­ed with, I’ve had to deal with pri­mar­i­ly cen­tred on turn­ing around an or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Hal­l­i­day was pre­vi­ous­ly the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Bar­ba­dos Wa­ter Au­thor­i­ty (BWA). He al­so worked in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor in T&T for 10 years from 2006 to 2016.

Hal­l­i­day said WASA will be clamp­ing down on peo­ple with il­le­gal con­nec­tions.

“One of the things we’re tak­ing very se­ri­ous­ly is, I’ll put it very broad­ly, il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. Whether it’s il­le­gal con­nec­tions or the type of ac­tiv­i­ty which neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the au­thor­i­ty and by ex­ten­sion neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the staff,” he said.