Dear Editor,
In Saturday’s issue of Stabroek News it was reported that after four years of incompetence, mismanagement and an expenditure of over 2.5m pounds sterling, Management Consul-tants Severn Trent Water Incorporated (STWI) has finally got its act together to improve the water services of Guyana Water Inc (GWI).
As a customer of GWI, there has not been any significant improvement of services over the past several years and daily periodic cut-offs and low water pressures are the order of the day. The partially treated water is distributed into the system with little or no filtration/sedimentation and the residue coagulants as well as the suspended organic and colloidal matters from the conservancy water create a foul smell in the piped water after a few hours standing. Therefore, GWI has no management in place to take over from STWI to improve the potable water supply in Guyana. If it had, there would have been noticeable improvements in the water quality and delivery service of GWI over the past several years with or without STWI.
Execution of the management contract between GWI and STWI has been a disaster from the start and now that the contract is coming to an end with none of the set targets achievable within the time frame laid out in the contract, there are finger pointings and fault findings by both parties to justify their shortcomings. To start with, GWI has a weak and incompetent management in place to monitor execution of the contract. The CEO and its Board of Directors instead of laying out strategies and setting-up benchmarks to monitor execution of the contract to ensure its set goals were achieving their targets as time progressed, got itself enmeshed into micro-management of the contract with STWI which from the start was a recipe for disaster and in the process lost sight of its mandate.
STWI entered into a management contract with GWI to provide services which were listed in the Contract Document. Any reputable consulting firm does its homework before entering into a contract and doesn’t put, “the cart before the horse.” i.e. by signing a contract and then contrive spurious excuses to defend its inadequate planning, poor supervision and plain bad judgment as to why it could not achieve the contract’s objectives in a timely fashion.
As stated, since STWI was aware it couldn’t meet the targets set out in the contract, it should have alerted GWI early in the contract and sought to negotiate a revision to the terms and conditions of the contract by listing those services which it felt it could execute and were achievable within agreed costs. Its failure to do so and keep billing GWI and receiving pay for poor professional service leaves much to be desired. It is evident that STWI did not have an adequately qualified staff in place to execute the contract and GWI, with a weak and incompetent Board to monitor contract implementation, found itself in a dilemma by realizing at this advanced stage of contract execution that funding was nearly fully drawn down with none of the targets achieving their set goal. Hence the rearguard and unconscionable action at this late stage to terminate the STWI contract.
It is presumptuous that GWI expects to continue to receive a subvention for its operations from the government without a thorough investigation into this debacle so that past mistakes could be quickly corrected. GWI should appoint people to serve on its board not because of their political affiliation but because of their knowledge and managerial competence to deal with complex issues.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan
