SHAS­TRI BOODAN

In an ef­fort to stop an ex­o­dus of pi­lots, en­gi­neers and oth­er qual­i­fied staff from the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NHSL), Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz has asked the com­pa­ny to em­bark on in­ter­nal salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.Cadiz said so when he at­tend­ed an of­fi­cial func­tion where the NHSL un­veiled its brand new Siko­rsky-76D he­li­copter at its Cam­den, Cou­va,head­quar­ters.

NHSL leased the $95 mil­lion air­craft from the Mile­stone Avi­a­tion Group for three years. The 76D is one of two built and the first to be put in­to com­mer­cial op­er­a­tion glob­al­ly.It­was leased to pro­vide ser­vices to Rep­sol with at least five flights dai­ly.NHSL plans on adding two more D76 he­li­copters to its fleet in Ju­ly for a to­tal of nine air­craft in its op­er­a­tion.

Joshey Ma­habir, gen­er­al man­ag­er of NHSL, said the com­pa­ny spent con­sid­er­able funds to train pi­lots and oth­er staff on­ly to lose them to a high­er pay­ing com­peti­tor which has the lux­u­ry of deep pock­ets while NHSL, a state com­pa­ny, op­er­ates un­der the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and a process of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.Ma­habir said NHSL lost about five or six pi­lots and en­gi­neers an­nu­al­ly.Cadiz said NHSL was op­er­at­ing in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment and must be re­moved from un­der the CPO.

On trans­porta­tion mat­ters, Cadiz said a $750 mil­lion 21st cen­tu­ry li­cens­ing of­fice was ex­pect­ed to come in­to op­er­a­tion by mid-year at Fredrick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni, and a full ac­cess cen­tre wiould be opened in To­ba­go.The min­is­ter said there were al­so plans afoot to de­vel­op an ef­fec­tive trans­porta­tion pol­i­cy to make life eas­i­er for the com­mut­ing pub­lic.

He said Gov­ern­ment planned to get new fast fer­ries for To­ba­go since the cur­rent ves­sels were age­ing and used up $100 mil­lion in diesel an­nu­al­ly. Cadiz said there was a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that they would be re­placed by ves­sels pow­ered by LNG which would use less than $10 mil­lion in fu­el an­nu­al­ly. Cadiz al­so an­nounced plans for all pub­lic trans­porta­tion ve­hi­cles to be pow­ered by CNG.There are plans to ex­pand the wa­ter taxi ser­vice, with ports to be es­tab­lished at Point Fortin and Wa­ter­loo.

Cadiz said the ser­vice was un­der­utilised, trans­port­ing just 1500 pas­sen­gers dai­ly when it hadthe ca­pac­i­ty to move sp­prox­i­matek­ly 9000 peo­ple a day.ASlso speak­ing at the func­tion was En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine who said there would be in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor over the next six years.He said this was due to in­creased in­vestor con­fi­dence in T&T econ­o­my and the in­cen­tives of­fered in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.