The idea of a sec­ond air­port in Trinidad is not as out­landish as it may ap­pear to scep­tics. Pt Lisas had its de­trac­tors but to­day plays a vi­brant role in our car­go out­turn. If we are at all se­ri­ous of de­vel­op­ing tourism ex­po­nen­tial­ly, and are aware of the grow­ing air trans­porta­tion needs of our na­tion, now is the time to enun­ci­ate air­port ex­pan­sion rather than wait un­til our ca­pac­i­ty reach­es break­ing point. As the ar­tic­u­late Ra­mad­har said re­cent­ly, too much analy­sis leads to paral­y­sis.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some of our peo­ple start off in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly paral­ysed by clois­tered and blink­ered vi­sion. The air­port ex­pan­sion idea should be de­vel­oped along with sev­er­al oth­er sug­ges­tions that have been made to the Gov­ern­ment by un­tram­melled thinkers. With brave new ideas, we can surge ahead of the glob­al re­ces­sion that ac­com­pa­nies eco­nom­ic down­turns.

Here's yet an­oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment: The de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal should be to re­lo­cate it to a more ac­ces­si­ble and spa­cious site with pur­pose-de­signed fa­cil­i­ties and com­plete mod­ern equip­ment in­stalled. The va­cat­ed space should then be flat­tened and re­built with our new Par­lia­ment com­plex oc­cu­py­ing it rather than re­in­stalled on the Red House premis­es as planned. This idea is self-rec­om­mend­ing and no grand ar­gu­ments are nec­es­sary to make the point. If we need a sup­ple­men­tary PoS hos­pi­tal, the present mis­guid­ed NA­PA should serve very well in that role.

MF Rah­man

Via e-mail