Shal­iza Has­sanali

Chair­man of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) Ger­ald Hadeed has been banned from us­ing or vis­it­ing the car park, of­fices or lounge at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which he man­ages.A copy of the AATT se­cu­ri­ty KIV log, which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained, showed that two writ­ten in­struc­tions were giv­en to se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers by Ag su­per­in­ten­dent Earl Al­fred, to pre­vent Hadeed from us­ing cer­tain ar­eas in­side and out­side the air­port ter­mi­nal.

The first in­struc­tion, which was giv­en on May 25 at 10.20 am stat­ed: "Please be in­formed that Mr Ger­ald Hadeed, the for­mer chair­man is not al­lowed in any unau­tho­rised or re­strict­ed ar­eas un­less he is a pas­sen­ger with a valid board­ing pass."And on June 7 at 1.15 pm, an­oth­er in­struc­tion was is­sued: that Hadeed "is not to be af­ford­ed any cour­te­sies when us­ing or vis­it­ing the air­port ter­mi­nal. For ex­am­ple, park­ing fa­cil­i­ties or ac­cess to any of­fices or DRL lounge. En­try is on­ly al­lowed as a bona fide pas­sen­ger."

Hadeed who is on sick leave, hav­ing suf­fer­ing mul­ti­ple in­juries af­ter a fall, con­firmed that he heard about the in­struc­tions but was not no­ti­fied by the AATT of the de­ci­sion tak­en."No­body told me about that, but I heard about it."Hadeed said when he in­quired, he was told that the in­struc­tions were di­rect­ed by for­mer deputy chair­man of the AATT Kurt Ajod­ha.Ajod­ha ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion last month af­ter ques­tions were raised about qual­i­fi­ca­tions on his CV.

Af­ter Ajod­ha's res­ig­na­tion, at­tempts were made to tem­porar­i­ly ap­point Carlisle Marks and at­tor­ney Car­ol Cuffy-Dowlat to the posts of chair­man and deputy chair­man.The le­gal­i­ty of their ap­point­ments was ques­tioned by AATT cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Shan­non Rudd, who cau­tioned them as they at­tempt­ed to hold a board meet­ing re­cent­ly.

Rudd told the two new mem­bers that their ap­point­ments had not been made in ac­cor­dance with the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Act, and there­fore any busi­ness they car­ried out as part of the board would be deemed il­le­gal.

'The PM can say if she wants me or not'

On Thurs­day, Hadeed de­scribed the move to de­bar him as "il­le­gal."Hadeed said un­til he is re­lieved of his po­si­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar or the board, "I am still the le­git­i­mate chair­man. If any­thing should hap­pen at the air­port, I am the one who would be held re­spon­si­ble."The last time Hadeed, a sup­port­er and mem­ber of the COP, vis­it­ed the air­port was in March.

Hadeed said he hopes the PM and her Cab­i­net can sort out the mat­ter.Hadeed said the con­fu­sion start­ed when he was of­fered the post of chair­man of CN­MG, which he de­clined.Asked if he will re­sign or pre­fer to serve on an­oth­er board, Hadeed said it does not mat­ter.

"That is non­sense, ac­tu­al­ly. If they of­fer me some­thing else I would tell them no. If they don't want me, they can just say that. I have so much things to do in my life, you know. I am of­fer­ing my ser­vices to help the coun­try, and if they don't like it they can go with their po­si­tion."It's not about who wants me or who don't want me there. It's whether or not they want to have a prop­er func­tion­ing air­port of which peo­ple can be proud, or they want it to go back to the stone age days."

Hadeed said the PM can tell him if she wants him or not. He said the last time they spoke, she was pleased with his per­for­mance.Hadeed's term as chair­man will come to an end in 16 months.

AATT GM: I'm aware of in­struc­tions

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er of the AATT Dayanand Bir­ju said he was aware of the in­struc­tions.Asked if mea­sures were tak­en to re­verse the de­ci­sion, Bir­ju said those in­struc­tions orig­i­nat­ed from the AATT board, un­der Ajod­ha.Bir­ju said he re­ceived no in­struc­tions from the board to change the de­ci­sion.

Ques­tioned if Hadeed was still the chair­man, Bir­ju said "I can't com­ment on that. I am sure you can ap­pre­ci­ate that the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of any au­thor­i­ty can not com­ment on board mat­ters. Those is­sues should be ad­dressed to an­oth­er quar­ter."

Bir­ju could not say why this de­ci­sion was tak­en.Al­fred fell ill short­ly be­fore go­ing on pre-re­tire­ment leave, Bir­ju said.