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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Tobago airport set to open earlier than expected

by

Elizabeth Gonzales
108 days ago
20241108
The new ANR Robinson International Airport Terminal building expansion project.

The new ANR Robinson International Airport Terminal building expansion project.

COURTESY: NIDCO

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The new ter­mi­nal at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ex­pan­sion project could be com­plet­ed soon­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned.

Al­though the ter­mi­nal was set to be ready by the end of the first quar­ter of 2025, Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) chair­man Her­bert George now be­lieves it could be fin­ished ear­li­er, pos­si­bly in the first part of that quar­ter.

The bil­lion-dol­lar project, con­struct­ed by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion, is be­ing man­aged by the Nid­co.

George has not com­mit­ted to a spe­cif­ic date but agrees that there is no­tice­able ad­vanced progress each week.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the con­struc­tion site yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia ob­served the larg­er of the two build­ings was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95 per cent com­plet­ed, with work­ers seen han­dling small­er tasks on the near­ly com­plet­ed build­ing.

Out­side, land­scap­ing at the main en­trance is un­der­way, with a new­ly plant­ed round­about and near­ly com­plet­ed fenc­ing along the pa­ra­me­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to George, the project re­mains on bud­get and has faced no ma­jor set­backs.

“It’s not just a shell,” George said. He added, “All the equip­ment has to be in and com­mis­sioned, so you have work go­ing on with­in the ter­mi­nal you are look­ing at. Those are the works that are be­ing done now.

“We are work­ing to­wards hav­ing it done, hav­ing it com­plet­ed no lat­er than the first quar­ter.”

In Sep­tem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter gave Par­lia­ment an up­date on the project. He not­ed that pay­ments to date to the main con­trac­tor to­tal US$65 mil­lion, not in­clud­ing land ac­qui­si­tion costs of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300 mil­lion. There was an ini­tial de­lay to the project due to the COVID19 pan­dem­ic.

At the con­tract sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the air­port ex­pan­sion project in Jan­u­ary 2020, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said a to­tal of $1.2 bil­lion would be spent on the con­struc­tion of a new air­port ter­mi­nal in To­ba­go, along with an up­grade of ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties and the ac­qui­si­tion of land in Crown Point to com­plete the ex­pan­sion.

He said the new ter­mi­nal was ex­pect­ed to cost $870 mil­lion, while $36 mil­lion would be spent to up­grade the ex­ist­ing air­port ter­mi­nal. The Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed $300 mil­lion to ac­quire 53 acres of land be­tween Store Bay Lo­cal Road and the air­port perime­ter fence in the Bon Ac­cord area.

The air­port ex­pan­sion con­tract, which was ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to take two years to be com­plet­ed, four months for de­sign and 20 months for con­struc­tion. At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Im­bert said Chi­na Rail­way’s bid was the on­ly com­pli­ant bid at the end of the ten­der­ing process.


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