Nicholas warns low standards pose greatest risk at APUA
Utilities Minister Melford Nicholas said Friday that the greatest threat facing the Antigua Public Utilities Authority is not ambition, but complacency, as he outlined a leadership philosophy centered on discipline, accountability and higher institutional standards.
“The greatest danger is not that the standards are too high, but that the standards are too low and we achieve them,” Nicholas said during remarks at the commissioning of the Barnacle Point reverse osmosis water plant .
Nicholas said his approach since assuming responsibility for public utilities has been deliberately demanding, particularly at the Antigua Public Utilities Authority, where he said leadership must resist settling for minimal performance.
“I don’t want to lead an APUA that achieves low standards. I want to achieve high standards,” he said .
The minister described himself as intentionally hands-on, citing frequent calls with APUA’s senior management to monitor operations and progress.
“I will remain the unreasonable minister that pushes the utility in the direction of its highest ideals,” Nicholas said, adding that sustained pressure is necessary to reform systems that have long underperformed .
Nicholas linked the emphasis on standards to public accountability, noting that failures in essential services such as water supply quickly become political flashpoints.
“When people don’t get water, they’re not concerned with the details,” he said. “They’re just concerned that they have a punching bag to beat upon” .
He said that reality requires utility leadership to be prepared with answers, data and solutions rather than excuses, particularly as production capacity expands through new infrastructure.
The Barnacle Point plant, developed through a partnership between APUA and Seven Seas Water Group, adds two million imperial gallons of water per day to the national system and forms part of a broader effort to stabilize water supply across Antigua .
Nicholas said higher standards must now guide the next phase of reform, including transmission upgrades, automation and institutional culture change.
“I don’t want to lead by aspiration alone,” he said. “I want to lead by standards” .
He said the objective is not simply to deliver water, but to build a utility capable of sustaining performance under pressure while meeting the expectations of the public it serves.
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When you stack these departments with political lackies who are there for the paycheck what do you expect. The parliament and cabinet is ill disciplined so too will be the departments which they manage.
The whole public sector has this problem and appears no one want to do anything about. Persons don’t come to work for months and getting paid, persons don’t perform no work and getting the incentives while the ones that do get nada, there is sharp increase of persons getting promoted,rewarded or even hired because of certain favours especially the female gender.
There are so much issues that are too numerous to mention at one go. However the public sector on a whole needs to clean up
Now please nobody start by pointing fingers at robin yearwood for running APUA down, his political colleagues knew his private business interest is also ostensibly in power generation.
And please Mr melford Nicolas don’t speak about standards, or is it you are just concern about deflecting the water criticism?
From since the George Walter PLM administration brought the APUA into being, they tried to implement standard when they brought in outside help, their work was sabotage when during the era of ALP opposition they threw chains over the lines and blackout the island, and the expertise brought in by PLM had started to put new ideas and infrastructure in place, and procured a lot of new materials that stayed up at Coolidge storage room that stayed there until the early 2000’s and was discarded because the engineers and workmen had no idea what they were. That is because ALP won the 1976 election and sabotage every efforts that was made to transform APUA into a more efficient utility provider.
Can Mr melford Nicolas tell me if anyone in APUA can speak from staking sheet data statistics about measurements on the poles or for pipes underground, if there was a standards you wouldn’t find that the same utility perhaps different department will go and either burst a pipe during excavation or an underground cable been damaged.
Even the very automation you speak of the APUA is far behind, it was during my time I argued about repeater or recloser switches that would reclose the electrical feeder during transient nuisance tripping. And I spoke of automated water valve and inline booster pumps to push water up hill. A lot of it will have to work with a dependable power supply and internet that is wireless, and APUA managers purposefully sabotage that capability to let the other two competitors make monies and ostensibly there must be some largesse.
When I pushed for APUA to have standards and no power disruption because of my experience and training, the entitlement cliques in APUA persecuted me until I eventually leave the company, does it look as standards to melford Nicolas presiding over this utility infrastructure with those rickety poles and sagging lines that was mentioned in Caribbean time bomb and still do to this day, young men only concern of power and position and nothing to offer, all because there is no staking sheet data statistics to create a synergy between the different utility? Mr Nicholas is correct when he said the management culture needs to change, but it will also take the removal of a minister sitting at APUA to allow for professionalism, no politician should sit at a statutory corporations doing the daily management or micromanaging as it is called, it should be run by a board with a budget to get the materials needed and recruitment of specialized engineers from abroad, we got to cut this culture of an engineer being a CEO and not a good technician. And also a utility commission, this is serious work and not something that could be ever carrier out by the ALP, or els they would not have sabotage the wadadli power plant to facilitate private power contract procurement, let’s look at this analogy of an old mack truck from the 1960’s parked to this day, and you were to try starting it, it will start and run, those heavy large size engine don’t die like small engines, so too those giant engines at APUA will run, the engines that carried antigua were from the 1950’s and they worked upon till recently, There is a lot need to be done to get things fix at APUA.
@ Hazel Roberts.
Thank you! What you have written says a lot
Hazel insider information of the inner machinations of the APUA was well worth reading.
Why is it that knowledgeable people like this aren’t still working there?
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