Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A new chap­ter in To­ba­go’s avi­a­tion his­to­ry took flight yes­ter­day with the grand open­ing of the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s east ter­mi­nal in Crown Point.

The un­veil­ing of the bil­lion-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty was well at­tend­ed, with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine backed by al­most his en­tire Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and PNM To­ba­go leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis were al­so present.

Au­gus­tine urged at­ten­dees to re­mem­ber the tremen­dous sac­ri­fice made by res­i­dents who had their lives up­root­ed to ac­com­mo­date the project. He ac­knowl­edged that many of them were still strug­gling to re­build their lives due to in­ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion from the for­mer cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

“I am sor­ry that you were on­ly com­pen­sat­ed based on the prop­er­ty val­ue from years ago rather than what it would cost for you to re­build your home. I am sor­ry that hav­ing sur­ren­dered your lands, you were then asked to pay the THA an arm and a leg for the lands to re­set­tle. I am sor­ry many of you have been left poor­er than you were be­fore,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said some res­i­dents had to sue to get com­pen­sa­tion for their prop­er­ties, while some el­der­ly res­i­dents died be­fore see­ing the com­plet­ed project.

He not­ed that not all res­i­dents ben­e­fit­ed from his THA’s de­ci­sion to re­duce the price of land to af­fect­ed res­i­dents from $50 per square foot to $15. He added that 50 fam­i­lies will soon ben­e­fit from THA hous­ing units,as the de­signs have been com­plet­ed.

He stressed that a clear plan must now be de­vised to max­imise the fa­cil­i­ty’s po­ten­tial. The new ter­mi­nal has the ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date three mil­lion pas­sen­gers an­nu­al­ly.

“Hav­ing built this mag­nif­i­cent ter­mi­nal, the ques­tion is: what are we go­ing to do with it? This fa­cil­i­ty mea­sures ap­prox­i­mate­ly 274,000 square feet, but air­port size does not de­ter­mine tourism suc­cess,” he said.

He not­ed that An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia have small­er air­ports than Pi­ar­co, but their vis­i­tors ex­ceed Trinidad’s.

“In tourism, size is not every­thing. We can build beau­ti­ful ter­mi­nals, but with­out di­rect flights, suf­fi­cient ho­tel rooms, ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing, at­trac­tive ex­pe­ri­ences, ex­cel­lent ser­vice, we will not achieve our tourism am­bi­tion.”

While re­it­er­at­ing his dis­ap­point­ment with To­ba­go’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion, he not­ed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s promise to ad­dress To­ba­go’s air­lift. He said the THA will sup­port all ef­forts by Gov­ern­ment to en­hance air­lift.

Au­gus­tine al­so point­ed out the THA’s $15 mil­lion in­volve­ment in the build­out of the ter­mi­nal, with con­ces­sion ar­eas for To­ba­go ven­dors sell­ing sweet treats, a chil­dren’s play­room, a prayer room, a breast­feed­ing room and a pet-re­lief space.

The fa­cil­i­ty al­so in­cor­po­rates To­ba­go’s his­to­ry and cul­ture with the check-in area adorned by im­ages of To­bag­o­ni­ans blow­ing a conch shell, play­ing the tam­brin and bal­anc­ing a bas­ket on their head, he said.

PM pledges 2 Sen­ate seats for To­ba­go

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ter­mi­nal will cre­ate job op­por­tu­ni­ties in avi­a­tion se­cu­ri­ty, ground han­dling, pas­sen­ger ser­vices, main­te­nance, re­tail, food and bev­er­age and op­er­a­tions. The rip­ple ef­fect of more vis­i­tors, she said, will be more busi­ness for taxi op­er­a­tors, restau­rants, ho­tels and a high­er de­mand for lo­cal­ly pro­duced food.

“That is the de­vel­op­ment I be­lieve in. De­vel­op­ment that puts mon­ey in peo­ple’s pock­ets,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Not­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fis­cal chal­lenges, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions had to be made. How­ev­er, she as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans of her com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing its peo­ple.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said she in­tends to bring a bill to Par­lia­ment to guar­an­tee To­ba­go two seats in the Up­per House. She said this would en­hance To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion with more leg­isla­tive voic­es.

“My Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed mea­sure will en­sure, as our an­them says, side by side we stand, is­lands of the blue Caribbean sea. Trinidad and To­ba­go, To­ba­go and Trinidad,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the gath­er­ing.

Emo­tion­al time for for­mer res­i­dents

While it was a cel­e­bra­to­ry mood for many guests, sev­er­al res­i­dents present, who were forced to re­lo­cate to make way for the air­port, said it was an emo­tion­al mo­ment.

Stacey-Ann James said her house was ex­act­ly where the car park for the new ter­mi­nal was lo­cat­ed.

James said, “My pores are rais­ing. I am ac­tu­al­ly sit­ting where I born and grow, where I spend most of my child­hood days. I ride bike right here.”

While proud of the new fa­cil­i­ty, she said their qual­i­ty of life has changed con­sid­er­ably. 

“Is the way how they dis­place us and put us in Shir­van. It’s like we are nowhere. Our life has not re­al­ly been up to where we want it to be, but we are get­ting there as time goes by.”

Mean­while, Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett called for po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty, as she not­ed dis­cus­sions pri­or to the open­ing about who should get cred­it for the fa­cil­i­ty. She said she had no prob­lem ac­knowl­edg­ing it was con­cep­tu­alised by Row­ley, as recog­nis­ing the work of one’s pre­de­ces­sors was im­por­tant. She added that politi­cians al­so have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to build on the progress.

“It is a fact that this project be­gan un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. It is al­so equal­ly a fact that it took this cur­rent gov­ern­ment to bring it to com­ple­tion. Both con­tri­bu­tions de­serve ac­knowl­edge­ment, be­cause de­vel­op­ment should nev­er be re­duced to a con­test to see who de­serves cred­it.”

Lis­ten­ing keen­ly was Row­ley, who at­tend­ed the event with PNM To­ba­go leader Cud­joe-Lewis.

In a Face­book post, Cud­joe-Lewis said she was not in­vit­ed to the open­ing, but at­tend­ed as the guest of her for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader (Row­ley), who asked her to ac­com­pa­ny him when he re­alised she was not at­tend­ing.

Row­ley said he was look­ing for­ward to the maid­en flight, which is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on the is­land to­day.

“I am quite anx­ious to have it op­er­a­tionalised and I trust that we will be us­ing it from to­day or to­mor­row. It is a ma­jor piece of in­fra­struc­ture for To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

Asked whether he viewed the air­port as part of his lega­cy, he said, “My lega­cy is in Ma­son Hall be­hind my grand­fa­ther’s house.”