Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams (right) commended the worker-led iniatiive of the BWA, while President of the Barbados Workers’ Union Division of the BWA Carl Boyce looks on.
THE BARBADOS Water Authority has addressed the backlog of over 6 000 burst mains in just seven weeks, as a result of a project which was conceptualised and implemented by workers.
Yesterday, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams showered the workers with praise, noting that it is through them that the calls to the BWA are now up to date. He also commended the work of the union for making the project a reality.
He was at the time giving an update on the Extended Hours Burst Programme at Tamarind Ave just off Country Road where crews were working on repairing a burst which had only been called in the day before.
Minister Abrahams described the project as a major victory for the BWA. He said a concerted effort was made to erase the “us against them” mentality which existed in the past, noting that there is a more harmonious relationship between the government, the workers and the union.
Minister Abrahams explained that an intensive process was undertaken where every aspect of the BWA was deconstructed and reconstructed to see how processes could be improved.
“A large emphasis in that deconstruct-reconstruct exercise was to get feedback from the people who are actually involved in the processes.
Management does not know it all. I am a politician, I am a lawyer,I was trained as a lawyer. My knowledge of water is what I learned since I came to the ministry and I became a Minister...
It would be foolish of me to think that I know what is best for the Water Authority and I know how best to plan programmes,” he stated.
“We had to take a comprehensive structured approach where we first sought to identify all of the bursts, identify all of the reports, set out a system of how we are going to approach it and start to tackle them one by one to bring them down. I am happy to say that the seven weeks in the project has yielded fantastic results.”
He said the workers stepped up to the plate in a big way. “They said look, let us take this as our project, let us cost of the project, let us structure the project, let us plan the project, let us put together the teams, let us plan the scheduling and let us deliver to you in a certain time frame and we took a decision as management and the board to hands-off and turn that process over to the workers.”
“As I said we are extremely happy with the results that we have achieved and I hope that this could be a template going forward for cooperative arrangements... working within statutory corporation and companies in Barbados. It is no longer us against them, we are all one team ...The whole of the Barbados Water Authority at every single level in every single department needs to come together and pull to get that done. And this is our success story,” he said. (JH)