The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has de­clared its full sup­port for new­ly ap­point­ed act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Jee­van Joseph, fol­low­ing sharp crit­i­cism from for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment yes­ter­day, WASA re­ject­ed what it de­scribed as the “mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion” of Joseph’s pro­fes­sion­al record and de­fend­ed his el­e­va­tion to the util­i­ty’s top ex­ec­u­tive post, stat­ing it had full con­fi­dence in his lead­er­ship and ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“Mr Jee­van Joseph is a high­ly ac­com­plished pro­fes­sion­al with over two decades of proven lead­er­ship and per­for­mance in the wa­ter and waste­water sec­tors. Since join­ing the Au­thor­i­ty in 2000, he has risen through the ranks based on mer­it, demon­strat­ing con­sis­tent ex­cel­lence at every lev­el of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. His ex­ten­sive op­er­a­tional ex­per­tise, in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, and strate­gic con­tri­bu­tions were key fac­tors in his re­cent ap­point­ment as Act­ing CEO,” the state­ment read.