WASA acting CEO says he quit for personal reasons

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

For­mer act­ing CEO of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Jee­van Joseph, is keep­ing qui­et about the rea­sons be­hind his sud­den de­par­ture from the State util­i­ty, con­firm­ing on­ly that he re­signed.

In a brief tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Joseph dis­missed re­ports that he had been sent on leave five months in­to the act­ing role.

“That was er­ro­neous. The on­ly fact is that I sent in my res­ig­na­tion based on per­son­al rea­sons. It would have been be­tween Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, and I sent it to the chair­man,” Joseph said.

He of­fered no de­tails on why he stepped down and said he is still con­sid­er­ing his next move. When con­tact­ed, act­ing Di­rec­tor of Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Dain Ma­haraj ini­tial­ly asked that ques­tions be sent via What­sApp, but lat­er re­ferred all queries to WASA chair­man Roshan Bab­wah or Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath. Nei­ther Padarath nor the au­thor­i­ty pro­vid­ed an ex­pla­na­tion, and at­tempts to reach both yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

News of the lead­er­ship change fil­tered un­even­ly through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Some em­ploy­ees said they heard about Joseph’s ex­it in pass­ing, while oth­ers be­lieved he re­mained on the job. How­ev­er, sources in­di­cat­ed Ma­haraj is ex­pect­ed to be named act­ing CEO. He al­so serves as chair­man of the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

Joseph was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO last June af­ter for­mer CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and ten se­nior ex­ec­u­tives were dis­missed. Their ap­point­ments had been tied to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s con­tro­ver­sial trans­for­ma­tion plan, which the new Gov­ern­ment has since re­scind­ed.

At the time, WASA said Joseph had more than two decades of man­age­r­i­al and tech­ni­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and had worked at the au­thor­i­ty since 2000. The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents most WASA work­ers, pub­licly sup­port­ed his ap­point­ment, with pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas say­ing mem­bers “sup­port­ed the board’s ac­tion.” Joseph lat­er met union lead­ers, de­scrib­ing those dis­cus­sions as “cor­dial and con­struc­tive.”

His qui­et de­par­ture now leaves the au­thor­i­ty’s lead­er­ship in flux once again, with work­ers await­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the board and min­istry af­ter no in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion was is­sued.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day con­firmed Joseph was not placed on leave but had in­stead ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion.

In June, Joseph was ap­point­ed un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing the fir­ing of for­mer CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, a St Kitts-born pro­fes­sion­al who earned $100,000 per month plus perks. Hal­l­i­day and nine se­nior ex­ec­u­tives were ter­mi­nat­ed just weeks af­ter the UNC as­sumed of­fice. Joseph sub­se­quent­ly led a ten-mem­ber ex­ec­u­tive team over­see­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Padarath said, “Mr Joseph ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion, and the board ac­cept­ed his res­ig­na­tion, so he has not been placed on leave.”

Asked what trig­gered the de­ci­sion, Padarath said, “He in­di­cat­ed in the let­ter to the board—which I saw a few hours ago—that he cit­ed per­son­al rea­sons. I have not spo­ken to him since, but those were the rea­sons he ad­vanced in the let­ter.”

On the mat­ter of who will next act as CEO, the min­is­ter said dis­cus­sions are un­der­way.

“The board has cir­cum­vent­ed an agree­ment in terms of who will act in the po­si­tion of CEO. We are cur­rent­ly in those dis­cus­sions. I on­ly re­ceived a copy of the res­ig­na­tion let­ter to­day. I have spo­ken to the chair­man to start mak­ing the nec­es­sary arrange­ments to have some­one act as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We are look­ing at one or two per­sons be­fore mak­ing a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion. By the end of to­day, we should have a fair idea of who will act, and we’ll share it with you as soon as that de­ci­sion is in place.”

Joseph, who spent more than two decades ris­ing through the ranks at WASA, had been ex­pect­ed to pri­ori­tise eq­ui­table wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion, in­fra­struc­ture re­silience and ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty. On as­sum­ing the post last year, he said he was ho­n­oured to lead the au­thor­i­ty at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.