Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says he is not be­ing kept in­formed on de­vel­op­ments re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Caribbean Air­lines Boe­ing 737-800 which broke in­to two on land­ing in Guyana. Speak­ing to re­porters at the wind­ing up of Moru­ga's Her­itage fes­ti­val last night, Warn­er said he was sad that the State owned air­line's rep­u­ta­tion had been tar­nished by the in­ci­dent in which the air­craft skid­ded off the end of a slick run­way stop­ping short of a deep ravine in Guyana's cap­i­tal George­town on Sat­ur­day. Warn­er ex­plained that he had no new in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter as he was not be­ing kept up to date by au­thor­i­ties.

He said: "It is un­for­tu­nate. I am glad that no lives have been lost. I am sad that CAL's im­age has been tar­nished some­what and I don't know what the in­ves­ti­ga­tions shall re­veal and so there­fore I will wait un­til the whole thing is in­ves­ti­gat­ed ful­ly be­fore I make a def­i­nite state­ment." He added: "I don't know how this mat­ter is be­ing han­dled. I have been kept out­side the loop so I re­al­ly don't know what is hap­pen­ing. All I know is what I read in the news­pa­per. I have not been di­rect­ly in­volved in the mat­ter." Asked whether he agreed with the de­ci­sion to take the pi­lots off ros­ter, Warn­er replied: "I don't know if this was a good move. If you take them off the ros­ter be­cause you want to save them from wor­ry and from harm and from con­cern, then fine. But if it is be­cause you have al­ready pre-judged the is­sue it is not cor­rect. I don't know if this was the case."

Asked why he wasn't be­ing kept in­formed, Warn­er said: "Girl, lis­ten, I don't have any an­swers to give, I am not in the loop, I don't have any rea­sons but I am bat­ting in my cor­ner but I have col­leagues like De Couteau who sup­port me but I don't even care, hon­est­ly." Warn­er al­so said that he was warm­ly wel­comed by the Moru­ga peo­ple and he as­sured them that he would fix their land­slips and bad roads.