Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

The en­tire board of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) has been re­placed one year be­fore their ap­point­ments were of­fi­cial­ly ex­pect­ed to have end­ed.

On Jan­u­ary 15, all six mem­bers of the Kei­th Thomas-chaired AATT ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

The oth­er mem­bers were Colonel Lyle Alexan­der, Joseph Granville, Earl Wil­son, Dawn Cal­len­der and Resh­ma Ma­haraj.

These six mem­bers were re-ap­point­ed to the AATT board for a pe­ri­od of two years ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 7, last year.

It was their sec­ond two-year ap­point­ment to the board af­ter first be­ing ap­point­ed on Jan­u­ary 23, 2018.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said there was noth­ing un­to­ward with res­ig­na­tions and that it was sim­ply a re­place­ment of the AATT board.

The AATT’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Zo­la Joseph yes­ter­day said Vish­nu Dhan­paul has been named the AATT chair­man.

Dhan­paul and five oth­ers were ap­point­ed to the AATT board for a pe­ri­od of two years, with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 20

The oth­er mem­bers of the board are James Philbert as Deputy Chair­man, and Adana Bain, Sav­it­ree Seep­er­sad, Mark Ro­many, Dhan­mat­tee Ram­dath, Christo­pher Al­cazar and Jamil Su­laimani as mem­bers.

The AATT is a statu­to­ry body es­tab­lished by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Act, No 49 of 1979.

It falls un­der the port­fo­lio of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

The man­date of the AATT is to de­vel­op and man­age its air­port es­tates, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment, main­te­nance and im­prove­ment of its fa­cil­i­ties, so as to en­sure the avail­abil­i­ty of ef­fi­cient, se­cure and safe avi­a­tion ser­vices and com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Both in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports, the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port are man­aged and op­er­at­ed by the AATT.