Clevon Raphael

Se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go are be­ing strength­ened with the re­cent dis­cov­ery of a high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult to de­tect metal­lic body bomb by Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty agents. In mak­ing this dis­clo­sure, chair­man of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ger­ald Hadeed is guar­an­tee­ing that no ter­ror­ist would ever suc­ceed in any at­tempt to blow up any of CAL's car­ri­ers.

Ac­knowl­edged as this coun­try's first pub­licly known po­lit­i­cal fi­nancier, Hadeed, a suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur who be­came ac­tive in pol­i­tics with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion, al­so speaks of the day when an an­gry Dr Er­ic Williams, for­mer prime min­is­ter, or­dered that he be put out of his of­fi­cial St Ann's res­i­dence for say­ing some­thing which Williams did not like.

Q: Mr Hadeed, are you aware that the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion is about to rum­ble at the air­port?

A: (In his of­fice at the Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny at Stan­more Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, of which he is the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Wednes­day af­ter­noon). For what?

The slow pace of the wage ne­go­ti­a­tions among oth­er things?

We have put for­ward a num­ber of pro­pos­als to the as­so­ci­a­tion...

The as­so­ci­a­tion's PRO Nol­lie Prescott told me you have no re­spect for the or­gan­i­sa­tion?

That is not true. I re­spect every­body; my style of man­age­ment is one of re­spect. They have asked for a meet­ing with me but I am un­able to do so be­cause the mat­ter is at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

What about the al­le­ga­tion that the board of the AATT of­fered mem­bers in­di­vid­ual con­tracts in or­der to break the union?

(Push­ing back­ward and for­ward in his swiv­el chair with hands be­tween his legs) No. No com­pa­ny wants to break a union. What we tried to do is to work with the union for the bet­ter­ment of their mem­bers and trav­ellers. We do know that there are times that the union and the man­age­ment will not agree. We would, how­ev­er, like mem­bers of the EPA to see the log­ic in the of­fer that was made to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

But you know Clevon, as the mat­ter is be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court I don't want to talk any more on that par­tic­u­lar is­sue which may on­ly com­pli­cate the sit­u­a­tion. It is not the right thing to do. Could we move on to oth­er ar­eas?

Do you want to di­rect the flow of this in­ter­view?

(Half smil­ing) No. No. I don't mean to di­rect this in­ter­view in any way, and I am aware that con­tentious is­sues sell news­pa­pers, but I am try­ing to deal with the more pos­i­tive ar­eas of where the board is mov­ing for the bet­ter­ment of trav­ellers and re­lat­ed mat­ters.

OK. Short­ly af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice you spoke about large sums be­ing owed to the Au­thor­i­ty by con­ces­sion­aires at the Pi­ar­co Air­port, what is the up­date on that sit­u­a­tion?

(Pulling out some files be­fore him and study­ing the notes) What we are see­ing right now is most of the ten­ants are mak­ing arrange­ments to make cur­rent their month­ly pay­ments and have put in place arrange­ments to wipe off their in­debt­ed­ness to the Au­thor­i­ty.

Specif­i­cal­ly what is hap­pen­ing to the mat­ter re­lat­ed to Caribbean Air­lines?

Oh Yes! CAL has made a pay­ment to us and I have sched­uled a meet­ing with the new chair­man for Wednes­day to fi­nalise the way for­ward for us to col­lect the out­stand­ing rents. And Clevon, among the plans we have for en­hanc­ing fa­cil­i­ties at the air­port is to open up a fine din­ing restau­rant in or­der that trav­ellers can eat a prop­er meal and sec­ond­ly, to rid us of the rep­u­ta­tion of a chick­en and chips air­port. Not that we are against those es­tab­lish­ments but trav­ellers, par­tic­u­lar­ly fam­i­lies, must be giv­en oth­er op­tions at the air­port.

Mr Hadeed, on the ques­tion of se­cu­ri­ty you did say that train­ing in this re­gard is an on­go­ing process (Again re­fer­ring to the notes which out­line those mea­sures) and I am sure you must be aware of the dis­cov­ery of a non-metal­lic body bomb un­earthed by Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel.

What? (Quick­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the ques­tion and loung­ing for­ward on his chair) Oh yes. As soon as we heard about that the Au­thor­i­ty man­age­ment took the nec­es­sary ac­tion to im­ple­ment and put in place more stren­u­ous screen­ing ap­pa­ra­tus yes­ter­day. And this height­ened alert will be in force un­til that threat has abat­ed. We do not want to be caught off guard...don't want to be lax in our se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions at all. We have that pro­gramme al­ready de­signed and it is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

Is this be­ing done with the as­sis­tance of any ex­ter­nal groups or agen­cies?

We do re­ceive in­for­ma­tion from ex­ter­nal agen­cies and even when we do not re­ceive in­for­ma­tion we are very proac­tive in this re­gard.

Mr chair­man, what as­sur­ance can you give that a would-be ter­ror­ist us­ing that new and dead­ly de­vice can­not suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out an at­tack on a CAL flight?

(An en­er­getic re­sponse) Mr Raphael, we are now im­ple­ment­ing state of the art screen­ing tech­nol­o­gy in ad­di­tion to oth­er pro­grammes which we're go­ing to dis­cuss with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, monies for which have been put in­to our bud­get to pur­chase high res­o­lu­tion se­cu­ri­ty equip­ment.

So you are say­ing that the trav­el­ling pub­lic can be as­sured that at least some­thing is be­ing done from our end to stall...

(Again an­tic­i­pat­ing) Oh, I can guar­an­tee you that. Un­der no con­di­tion would the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry of Trans­port al­low our se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem to be lax and put the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our trav­ellers in jeop­ardy. Un­der my watch I guar­an­tee you that. As a mat­ter of fact we have just se­cured the ser­vices of a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al who spent 13 years in se­cu­ri­ty for the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.

He has re­turned home and has a two-year con­tract to as­sist us in the de­vel­op­ment of equip­ment re­quired that would en­sure that this coun­try has the safest air­port in the west­ern hemi­sphere. Our in­ten­tion is to en­sure that drug run­ning and hu­man traf­fick­ing are elim­i­nat­ed at our air­ports in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mr Hadeed, I want to turn now to your po­lit­i­cal side hav­ing been pub­licly ac­knowl­edged as the coun­try's first po­lit­i­cal fi­nancier, and I be­lieve you did work be­hind the scenes for the PP's 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. How do you find the PP coali­tion is com­ing along, and can I get an ob­jec­tive re­sponse, not as a PP sup­port­er?

Well you know Clevon, I would al­ways be ob­jec­tive in any­thing I tell you, po­lit­i­cal­ly. I am sat­is­fied with the gov­er­nance of the coun­try un­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The PP has in ac­tu­al fact done a tremen­dous amount of work with the lit­tle re­sources they had when they got in­to of­fice.

As­sum­ing this is so, what counts for the per­cep­tion that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is be­ing bugged down by too many con­tro­ver­sies which may over­shad­ow the pos­i­tives?

A lot of the neg­a­tives are due to the in­ex­pe­ri­ence of the new min­is­ters.

Yeah, but it is al­most two years since they have been in of­fice.

Right. But on too many oc­ca­sions one min­is­ter would com­ment on the hap­pen­ings of an­oth­er min­is­te­r­i­al col­league which rais­es a lot of me­dia on­ly wait­ing to get a glimpse of the slight­est of con­tro­ver­sy and blow it out of pro­por­tion. There is al­so still with­in all the gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments a lot of PNM "plants" who are in­ter­fer­ing with the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance.

Are you sug­gest­ing we should not have a vi­brant op­po­si­tion?

I am not say­ing that at all. I am say­ing that op­po­si­tion should be man­i­fest­ed in the Par­lia­ment and not in the min­istries where pub­lic ser­vants work and who must be com­mit­ted to the im­ple­ment­ing the poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment of the day and not be be­hold­en to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly the op­po­si­tion.

What ev­i­dence do you have of PNM "plants" in the pub­lic ser­vice work­ing against the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion, and isn't this an un­found­ed al­le­ga­tion Mr Hadeed?

I have seen it in the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, so I can say where I am as chair­man I have found a lot of in­ter­fer­ence by mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. I want them to work for the Au­thor­i­ty. And while you have the right to join a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of your choice it must not be that you would put your par­ty first be­fore the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

What would be your re­sponse if Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley should ac­cuse you of talk­ing non­sense in that al­le­ga­tion?

(Twid­dling a pen) Well, I would like to have a dis­course with Dr Row­ley on that. He is my good friend and he knows I am a fair per­son. Clevon, my phi­los­o­phy is that the State must work for the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens but we went wrong many many years ago and we have to try and cor­rect those wrongs. And I am hap­py to say this Gov­ern­ment has start­ed that process.

What are some of these wrongs Mr Hadeed?

Well, Er­ic Williams (the first prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go) once told me that he kicked out the colo­nial­ists from Trinidad and To­ba­go, but what he al­so did was re-colonise the Afro-Tri­nis by in­sti­tut­ing the Spe­cial Works Pro­gramme which has mor­phed to­day in­to the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme, ef­fec­tive­ly deny­ing them the in­de­pen­dence to vote for a par­ty that they want by ty­ing them to a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the PNM in this in­stance. I told Dr Williams that he was wrong while we were talk­ing at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence.

And what was his re­sponse?

(A somber tone) He called his chief se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Mr Hyn­d­man and or­dered him to put me out of his res­i­dence. That was the end of me and Er­ic Williams as part­ners. Ac­tu­al­ly I was one of the first per­sons he told he was go­ing to re­sign in 1973. We had a great re­la­tion­ship and he used to send for me to talk over things. He liked to talk to plen­ty peo­ple and he liked my thought process. In­stead of the PNM try­ing to el­e­vate and keep the Afro Tri­nis on the right road with ed­u­ca­tion...

Is the PP do­ing that to­day?

Yes. But we have lost two or three gen­er­a­tions so we have to go back to ba­sics and do things like go­ing in­to the poor ar­eas of the coun­try and put in pre-kinder­garten and kinder­garten schools with state of the art tech­nol­o­gy to give those un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren an op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­stand what tech­nol­o­gy re­al­ly is. How to read and how to write so that when they get to pri­ma­ry school they have a sound foun­da­tion to move for­ward.