By John Myers, Jnr., Staff ReporterROUGHLY 600 workers are to be made redundant at the state-owned National Water Commission (NWC) as part of recommendations arising from a management audit conducted by KPMG into the operations of the Commission last year.
This was confirmed by Water and Housing Minister, Donald Buchanan, in an interview with The Gleaner yesterday. According to Minister Buchanan, the bulk of those who will be affected by the redundancy exercise will come from the corporate services division and the eastern section of the operations division.
"We will, in fact, see some major reduction in the number of people at the corporate services division... which at present has about 505 (employees). It could be reduced to about 261," Mr. Buchanan said.
He explained that the eastern division the larger of two divisions into which the management operations of the NWC is to be divided will be reduced to approximately 1,099 workers, down from 1,361. The western division, the second of the two divisions, will move from 740 to 603.
"So overall you could be talking about a differentiation or variance in terms of the number of jobs of about 600," the Water and Housing Minister said.
MASSIVE LOSSES
The KPMG audit was commissioned in 2001 by the Board of the NWC to examine the operations of the water utility. This, in the wake of massive losses and the incursion of $6.5 billion in debt. The auditing firm had suggested a reduction of 20 per cent of the more than 2,000 employees as part of measures to improve efficiency and restore financial viability to the Commission. However, more than 20 per cent will be affected.
Under the staff reduction exercise, workers will be given the choice of opting for voluntary redundancy or voluntary retirement for those who qualify. The NWC's management will decide who is to be made redundant. Thereafter, workers will be employed under a performance-based regime where each employee will be evaluated based on performance. Mr. Buchanan was unable to say exactly how much the redundancy payments will cost the Commission, but acknowledged that it will be significant.
However, he expressed optimism that the NWC would benefit from the exercise. "We expect that from the efficiencies to be developed as a result of the new structure, we should be saving about $300 million per year," he stressed.
