Charles Kong Soo

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj says the 24-hour open­ing of the Arthur NR Robin­son Air­port will boost To­ba­go's tourism in­dus­try and econ­o­my. He was speak­ing at a meet­ing with THA mi­nor­i­ty leader Ash­worth Jack, Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) chair­man Ger­ald Hadeed, Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) chair­man George Nicholas, CAL act­ing CEO Robert Cor­bie, Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) chair­man Khem­c­hand Ram­paul and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives from the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment of the tourism sec­tor and econ­o­my of To­ba­go. The meet­ing took place at the of­fices of the Min­istry of Trans­port at Tow­er D In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, 1A Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day.

Speak­ing with the me­dia be­fore the meet­ing, Ma­haraj said five ma­jor is­sues were sched­uled to be dis­cussed:

• The sched­ul­ing of a lat­er flight from To­ba­go to Trinidad af­ter 8.30 pm;

• in­creas­ing the num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al flights from To­ba­go;

• open­ing the ANR Robin­son Air­port 24 hours with no lock­down af­ter 8.30 pm;

• de­vel­op­ing the Arthur NR Robin­son Air­port with some "sig­nif­i­cant works" from the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty; and

• pur­chas­ing seat sales from the THA for CAL.

Ma­haraj lament­ed the ab­sence of THA rep­re­sen­ta­tives who with­drew on hear­ing Jack was present. "For the last five years, we would have ex­pe­ri­enced a marked dip in the To­ba­go tourism in­dus­try, but it was not from a lack of try­ing," Jack said. "We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to but­tress the To­ba­go econ­o­my, we have seen some ho­tels up for sale and oth­ers vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty." He said with the air­port open­ing 24 hours, it could sur­pass more than 100,000 pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go per year.

Hadeed said the process should not take longer than three weeks and he would like to have it im­ple­ment­ed be­fore Car­ni­val. "We are look­ing at hav­ing some sig­nif­i­cant work done on the roof of the Air­port which is leak­ing, the de­par­ture lounge which is woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate, de­vel­op­ing a VIP lounge for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers as well as a VIP lo­cal lounge," Ma­haraj said. He said the cost of the work on the air­port should be jux­ta­posed against the val­ue it would bring to To­ba­go, its econ­o­my and em­ploy­ment but it will not be any­thing pro­hib­i­tive, he said.