Watercare boss says political focus on his $775k salary triggered resignation

Tuesday, 15 September 2020

Mayor Phil Goff says Watercare could have done better

The departing chief of Auckland Council’s Watercare company says media and political focus on his $775,000 salary was the last straw in his decision to resign.

Raven Jaduram said the media attention on his salary, at a time of unprecedented drought, was something neither Watercare, nor his family, needed.

Jaduram told Stuff that “a lot of it” was from Mayor Phil Goff in commenting that his successor would be paid a lot less – suggesting that somehow the salary was Jaduram’s own doing.

However, he said that was not the only reason, and that he had told the board chair last year of his intention to resign once he’d reached six years in the role.

* Auckland drought: Goff says Watercare could have done better

* Auckland drought: Terse exchange between Mayor and Watercare

Raveen Jaduram, the CEO of Watercare, at a media conference on the need for water restrictions in Auckland.

Auckland has unprecedented water restrictions, banning most outdoor use, after two years of record-breaking six-month droughts, leaving water supply at 67 per cent versus the usual 90 per cent at this time of year.

Mayor Phil Goff, whose council oversees Watercare, has pointed the finger at the company for, in his view, not having managed the drought as well as it could have.

Jaduram said he would have been reluctant to leave if he had failed to secure the $224 million of funding needed to boost water supply progressively over the next year.

Auckland's second-largest water storage lake at the Upper Maungatawhiri Dam in the Hunua Ranges, at just 49 per cent full during drought.

“By July next year, we will have so much water, and water treatment capacity, to get us through to 2030-35,” he told Stuff.

He said he always worked in three and six-year cycles, and his first three years as chief executive had been to create a new culture, with the second three to raise Watercare’s profile both globally and nationally.

Jaduram said with talk over recent years of water reform within the country, there had been an opportunity to do more outside the city, such as managing networks in neighbouring Waikato District.

He said in any break-up it was never just one thing, and while he personally could manage the attention on how much he earned, it affected his family, and was a distraction for Watercare.

In August, when his resignation was announced, Jaduram told staff it was about timing.

“When I was appointed CEO in October 2014, I gave a commitment to the board to remain for six years and that time has come around,” he said in a statement published in the board’s monthly agenda.

Jaduram said he did not set his own salary, and told RNZ it was not for him to say what his successor should be paid.

He will leave at the end of October, by which time he hopes water supply lakes will have recovered to 75 per cent, a level at which Watercare would be comfortable about getting through even a dry summer.