“A dream made re­al­i­ty” was how the chair­man of the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al com­mit­tee de­scribed an an­nounce­ment that the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port would be re­named in ho­n­our of Dr Er­ic Williams.

Dr Williams was the coun­try's first Prime Min­is­ter and led the coun­try on the road to in­de­pen­dence.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment while speak­ing in New York on Tues­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, com­mit­tee chair­man Regi­nald Vi­dale could bare­ly con­tain his ex­cite­ment.

He said yes­ter­day, Sep­tem­ber 25, Williams would have been 108 years old.

“It’s long in com­ing I would say, it is wor­thy of a great son of the soil, a great con­trib­u­tor to this coun­try, to our In­de­pen­dence and a great con­trib­u­tor to our Re­pub­li­can­ism,” Vi­dale said.

He said he be­lieved that Williams would have been very hap­py with the de­ci­sion and would have felt ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

He said since 2012, he has been call­ing for the air­port to be re­named af­ter Williams.

“To­day I am very elat­ed and hap­py, I feel like I can take a na­tion­al flag and just jump up and down, wav­ing it and com­mend­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for giv­ing to Dr Williams what is long over­due,” Vi­dale said.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) foun­da­tion mem­ber, Fer­die Fer­reira al­so com­mend­ed Row­ley for his de­ci­sion.

“Al­though in fact Williams stat­ed pri­or to his death that he did not want any mon­u­ments named af­ter him but that is what they usu­al­ly say but his­tor­i­cal­ly it is the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard to name air­ports af­ter states­men, peo­ple who have con­tributed hand­some­ly and there can be no two Dr Williams,” Fer­reira said. Asked if he felt Row­ley made the de­ci­sion to gain po­lit­i­cal mileage ahead of two ma­jor elec­tions, Fer­reira said the pub­lic must al­ways re­mem­ber that the Prime Min­is­ter is a politi­cian.

“The first thing you have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion is that the Prime Min­is­ter is a politi­cian, they all look for things that are ad­van­ta­geous to them or what they con­sid­er to be po­lit­i­cal as­sets, so if he thinks this is a po­lit­i­cal as­set in which he would ob­tain sup­port, I don’t see any prob­lem in that.”

He said this could al­so be Row­ley’s way of pay­ing trib­ute to Williams dur­ing his own tenure in of­fice.