The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert MP, has ac­cused the me­dia of en­gag­ing in a “smear” cam­paign against the air­port project in To­ba­go, along with “sup­pres­sion of sub­stan­tive ev­i­dence”—specif­i­cal­ly, doc­u­ments he says cor­rects “mis­in­for­ma­tion” about the project that has been cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main.

In a news re­lease, which was ac­com­pa­nied by the doc­u­ments to which he refers, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter takes the me­dia to task for con­tin­u­ing to share in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion that orig­i­nal­ly em­anat­ed from a leaked Cab­i­net Note on the project.

“Con­crete ex­am­ples of this de­ceit are il­lus­trat­ed in the de­cep­tive ed­i­to­r­i­al pub­lished in the Dai­ly Ex­press on Fri­day, De­cem­ber 6, 2024,” Min­is­ter Im­bert writes.  “That ed­i­to­r­i­al false­ly ac­cused the Min­is­ter of re­ly­ing on du­bi­ous ‘word of mouth’ ev­i­dence, false­ly in­sin­u­at­ed that the in­crease in the cost of the air­port project was in the vicin­i­ty of $500m, and ques­tioned the air­port's struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty, with­out a shred of ev­i­dence.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter writes:

“To de­bunk the half-truths, de­cep­tion and out­right lies in that ed­i­to­r­i­al, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance held an­oth­er press con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 6th, 2024, and pro­duced doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence of the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the project to the me­dia from a range of ex­perts work­ing on the project, such as:

   •   the spe­cial­ist struc­tur­al en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tants, KS&P, on the project, who were en­gaged by NID­CO, the ex­e­cut­ing agency for the project, to re­view the struc­tur­al de­signs pro­duced by the Con­trac­tor, CR­C­C­CL, and

   •   the spe­cial­ist in­ter­na­tion­al con­struc­tion con­sul­tants, Gleeds, who were en­gaged by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, to seek its in­ter­est on the project.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter, these let­ters “con­firmed strict ad­her­ence to the most up-to-date and rig­or­ous in­ter­na­tion­al build­ing codes on the project.” 

This composite image shows the letters from specialist structural engineering consultants KS&P, and specialist international construction consultants Gleeds, providing information on the structural integrity of the Tobago airport project. [Images courtesy Ministry of Finance]

“How­ev­er, not one of these let­ters was pub­lished by the me­dia to the pub­lic to set the record straight and cor­rect the mis­lead­ing sto­ries pro­duced by the me­dia ear­li­er in the week,” he stat­ed.

“Fur­ther, and more baf­fling,” he con­tin­ued, “is the me­dia’s in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly and hon­est­ly utilise the in­for­ma­tion in the very Cab­i­net Note they re­lied on as sup­port for their sto­ry on costs at the air­port to in­form the pub­lic of the ac­tu­al cost of the project to date and the fur­ther fund­ing be­ing re­quest­ed, es­pe­cial­ly when all of the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion to clear the air, was con­tained in the Note that re­porters were bran­dish­ing at the press con­fer­ences held on the mat­ter.” 

Min­is­ter Im­bert as­serts:

“The Ex­press has over­stat­ed the cost of the air­port project to the pub­lic by at least $100 mil­lion and has re­fused to cor­rect the er­ror.  The rea­sons for leav­ing that de­gree of mis­in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main baf­fle and es­cape the Min­istry.” 

“The Cab­i­net Note clear­ly in­di­cates the project's time­line, the chal­lenges faced, the amend­ments to and phas­es of the project, the costs per fis­cal year to date, the new re­quest­ed fund­ing to com­plete the project and the JUS­TI­FI­CA­TIONS for those re­quests,” he point­ed out. “Any right-think­ing jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor would see the need to share this in­for­ma­tion with the pub­lic as part of its fourth es­tate role.”

He added: “This is a ma­li­cious at­tempt to smear the new To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal, which, when com­plet­ed, will be one of the most mod­ern and finest air­ports in the Caribbean, un­taint­ed by the naked cor­rup­tion that plagued the 2001 Pi­ar­co Air­port project, over 20 years ago.”