Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management, Dr. David Estwick.
Significant changes are coming to the way the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) responds to outages and the way in which it communicates with the public.
The changes will be the result of the introduction of The Rapid Response Unit, which Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management, Dr. David Estwick,
announced has been established by the Board of the BWA.
This Unit, he said, has been created to better help the BWA meet the requirements as set out by the Fair Trading Commission (FTC). With that in mind, he assured that the days of the BWA taking long to respond to ruptured mains will become a thing of the past. He made the point as he noted that such delays account for non-revenue water loss and negatively impacts the bottom line of the institution.
Speaking yesterday afternoon during a news conference at the Ministry’s Graeme Hall headquarters, Minister Estwick told media personnel and those listening via the radio that the Unit is intended to operate on a two-shift system, and he has instructed the BWA’s management to engage the union on the matter.
Moreover, he said the Unit will be made up of personnel already employed by the State-owned entity, as he explained that they have “significant internal capability” to manage the tasks at hand.
He also stated that to ensure the Unit stands up to expectations, there will have to be ongoing training and retraining of staff, as well as a monitoring, evaluating and enforcement systems put in place. He made the point as he reiterated that the genesis of this Unit lies in the FTC’s regulation of the BWA, as it will encounter financial penalties for not making connection and reconnections in a timely manner and not fixing ruptured mains within a specified period of time.
“That Unit will be responsible for rapidly responding to outages due to infrastructure failure that results in loss of service to customers; let me be clear, that results in loss of service to customers. It will have responsibility for communication with the public. It will have responsibility for deploying water tankers. It will have responsibility for deploying and filling community tanks. It will have responsibility to engage customer service, inventory, procurement and engineering departments,” he said.
Minister Estwick said that this new Unit, together with the increase in water tankers, will help to better manage the over 90 community tanks that have been erected and to service areas affected by
outages.
His comments came as he said that all this is part of the efforts to refocus the management of the State-owned entity. He was speaking in relation to the BWA now being regulated by the FTC, as he noted that the first phase of that regul-ation is the service to be delivered by the BWA. He explained that the new management strategy is centred around managing water as an asset, which he is adamant is necessary given the expected continuing impact of climate change and El Ninos on the country’s groundwater supply.
“The new management strategy also focuses in on the Barbados Water Authority expanding its focus beyond the regulation and engineering functions and move to appreciate that the Barbados Water Authority is a service organisation, and engineering actions are but supporting pillars to the delivery of service of providing potable water,” he said.
The Minister announced that with the new focus, emphasis will be placed on customer service, communications and timely interventions, and he gave the assurance that it will be introduced as
a matter of urgency. (JRT)
Section: