GEORGE­TOWN–Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) lead­ers are be­ing urged to sup­port a loan ap­pli­ca­tion by the re­gion­al air­line, Li­at, for funds to un­der­take a re-fleet­ing ex­er­cise to sus­tain its op­er­a­tions and im­prove ser­vices.A Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at state­ment said re­gion­al trans­port min­is­ters who met in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines last week, have agreed to put for­ward to the re­gion­al lead­ers a pro­pos­al that they sup­port the Li­at loan ap­pli­ca­tion to the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank.

The state­ment gave no de­tails re­gard­ing the costs of the re-fleet­ing ex­er­cise, but Li­at which flies to 21 des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion and has 1,000 flights week­ly, said it was seek­ing to ac­quire French-made 48- and 63-seater air­craft.The state­ment said the trans­port min­is­ters had al­so rec­om­mend­ed that air trans­port ser­vices be in­clud­ed among the group of es­sen­tial ser­vices and the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion be en­act­ed to give ef­fect to this re­al­i­ty.

Last month, Li­at's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ian Brun­ton said the avi­a­tion in­dus­try should al­so be clas­si­fied as an es­sen­tial ser­vice, with leg­is­lat­ed re­strict­ed rights to strike.Brun­ton said tourism is the main­stay of the ma­jor­i­ty of the re­gion's economies and air ser­vices con­nect the coun­tries of the Caribbean, feed­ing that pri­ma­ry rev­enue stream.

"I, there­fore, sub­mit that avi­a­tion ser­vices should be treat­ed in a dif­fer­ent way to oth­er in­dus­tries and it is im­por­tant that gov­ern­ments through­out the re­gion act now to list avi­a­tion ser­vices as es­sen­tial," he said.The Cari­com state­ment said the re­gion­al trans­port min­is­ters agreed to the es­tab­lish­ment of a team chaired by St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, to re­view el­e­ments of a draft pol­i­cy or air and mar­itime trans­port and asked mem­ber states to sub­mit their com­ments by the end of this month.

"The min­is­ters agreed that they would keep un­der re­view on-go­ing ini­tia­tives such as the pro­pos­al for a fast fer­ry ser­vice in the South­ern Caribbean," the state­ment said, adding that on the fu­el sub­sidy grant­ed by T&T to Caribbean Air­lines, con­sul­ta­tions in an ef­fort to re­solve the mat­ter am­i­ca­bly will be con­duct­ed be­tween the share­hold­er gov­ern­ments of Li­at and Port-of-Spain "pri­or to and dur­ing the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing which will be held in Trinidad and To­ba­go in Ju­ly."

CMC