Richard Lord

The pro­posed Cou­va Air­port at Cam­den is not a pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment at this time. This was re­vealed by Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj yes­ter­day.Speak­ing at the first-year an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in Cou­va on May 24 this year, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced plans to con­struct the air­port.But the an­nounce­ment was met with al­most im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tion from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who said the plan to build a third na­tion­al air­port in the coun­try was crazi­ness.Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day that while the air­port was an in­tent of the Gov­ern­ment, there were sev­er­al things that must be done be­fore the project could be im­ple­ment­ed.He said there was need for wide­spread pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing cit­i­zens.Ma­haraj said some peo­ple liv­ing in Cou­va had al­so ex­pressed some con­cerns about the project.He in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that while the Gov­ern­ment re­mained com­mit­ted to the project as was an­nounced by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, it was not a "pri­or­i­ty project at this time."

He said there were al­ready two na­tion­al air­ports in the coun­try-one at Pi­ar­co and the oth­er at Crown Point.And he in­sist­ed that while there were out­stand­ing chal­lenges at the two air­ports, "they pale in­to in­signif­i­cance when one looks at the prob­lems we have at the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment and oth­er ar­eas."Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment, and in par­tic­u­lar his min­istry, re­mained com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing some of the oth­er ur­gent mat­ters af­fect­ing the peo­ple of T&T.He said the re­quire­ments for con­struc­tion of the Cou­va Air­port "will take some time but we have to en­sure we ad­dress some of the oth­er press­ing and ur­gent mat­ters af­fect­ing the sec­tor now."It re­mains un­clear whether the project will be in­clud­ed in Mon­day's na­tion­al bud­get to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an.