Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Weeks ahead of the open­ing of the new air­port ter­mi­nal in To­ba­go, the le­gal de­f­i­n­i­tion of the air­port in Crown Point has been changed.

In a Sep­tem­ber 11 le­gal no­tice, the term “Crown Point Air­port” has been delet­ed and sub­sti­tut­ed with ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The Air­ports (Re­strict­ed Ar­eas) (Amend­ment) Or­der 2026 was signed by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

The Crown Point Air­port was de­fined in Sched­ule Two of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T Act via its bound­aries.

How­ev­er, those bound­aries are ex­pect­ed to of­fi­cial­ly be re­vised with the ex­pan­sion of the fa­cil­i­ty east­wards fol­low­ing land ac­qui­si­tion by the State for the project.

A sub­tle change was made to the re­strict­ed ar­eas with “air ter­mi­nal build­ing” plu­ralised to air ter­mi­nal build­ings.

Oth­er re­strict­ed ar­eas re­main the same, in­clud­ing all land in the St Patrick parish form­ing part of the air­port, con­tain­ing aero­drome land­ing area, the run­ways and bound­ed by the perime­ter fence.

How­ev­er, a ma­jor ad­just­ment was made to the ex­emp­tions from the re­strict­ed zone with Dee-Gees Restau­rant ex­clud­ed.

Pub­lic car parks and the ac­cess roads lead­ing to and from the pub­lic car parks and the air ter­mi­nal build­ings re­main out­side the re­strict­ed zone.

Last month, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the build­out of the air­port ter­mi­nal was in its sec­ond phase.

He added that a few ad­min­is­tra­tive le­gal pro­ce­dures must be fol­lowed to fa­cil­i­tate op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

“I know Cus­toms must place in the Gazette that this ter­mi­nal is go­ing to be used. That will al­low for things like du­ty-free ac­cess and op­er­a­tions Cus­toms has by law, and oth­er teething is­sues,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in To­ba­go with­in a mat­ter of weeks to of­fi­cial­ly open the air­port.

Last Wednes­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that while on the is­land, she will al­so open three po­lice-army posts which have been built in Good­wood, Ply­mouth and Sig­nal Hill.

“I have to go and open the air­port in To­ba­go; I have to open those things soon,” she said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Alexan­der and Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.