Thursday, March 28, 2024

200-million lift for BWA

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THE BARBADOS WATER AUTHORITY will by November embark on a number of critical projects, which will cost just over $200 million.
Executive chairman of the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), Arni Walters, speaking at a Press conference yesterday at the authority’s headquarters at Manor Lodge, identified some of the projects to be undertaken: the International Development Bank (IDB) project, costing $106 million, the capital works programme, which would account for about $12 million, and upgrades to customer service relations.
The chairman spoke at length on the extensive IDB project, revealing that it would have three main components.
The first component, said Walters, would involve the reorganisation and modernisation of the BWA, with a major focus on the change management of the reorganisation of the authority over a two or three-year period.
He noted, however, that the BWA was currently having discussions with the Barbados Workers’ Union on a number of issues, and still needed to submit a number of proposals to the union in order to have some “settled positions”.
“It is a project certainly that will use a number of different skills outside of the average engineering water resource type projects we usually have, so we are expected to prepare a long-term business plan,” he noted.
He also said there would be change management benchmarking of performance standards, provision of a 24-hour service, and implementation of long-term customer service, all features of the customer service centre expected to be up and running by October 30.
“Plans are afoot to operationalise a customer service centre in this building, where we hope to have improved customer services, cashier services and response services to burst mains and other crises,” he added.
An emergency command centre will also handle any major burst mains situations, relayed through the public relation systems.
“In the last month, we have suffered a number of burst mains and on a couple of occasions thunderstorms . . . have caused some difficulties with the installations,” he added.

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