Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, As­sem­bly­man Trevor James char­tered a pri­vate air­craft to re­turn from Mar­tinique on Sun­day, as Trop­i­cal Storm Tam­my neared that is­land.

How­ev­er, James yes­ter­day said he was foot­ing the bill for the flight as it was his pri­vate arrange­ment.

Mean­while, the flight was flagged by the coun­try’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) on Sun­day, as sources said the air­craft did not have au­tho­ri­sa­tion for any com­mer­cial trav­el.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the cost of the char­ter—US-reg­is­tered air­craft N 41148—is be­tween US$5,000 to US$9,000.

The flight, which left Mar­tinique at 11.30 am, brought in James, an­oth­er THA of­fi­cial and two oth­er pas­sen­gers em­ployed at the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS)—Bevon Hen­ry and Khade­sha La Touche.

James and the oth­er trav­ellers were in Mar­tinique for a con­fer­ence ti­tled “Con­nec­tiv­i­ty Con­fer­ence of the Greater Caribbean”, which ran from Oc­to­ber 18-20.

At the time of the con­fer­ence, the is­land was on alert for Tam­my.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that sev­er­al peo­ple left the is­land on Sat­ur­day to head to Mi­a­mi or New York for dif­fer­ent con­nect­ing flights back in­to the re­gion. James, how­ev­er, made al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on who fund­ed the trip and how the char­ter was pro­cured, James ini­tial­ly hung up.

When con­tract­ed by an­oth­er re­porter, how­ev­er, he said flights “go­ing north” had been can­celled.

“Trop­i­cal Storm Tam­my led to the can­cel­la­tion of my flights be­tween Mar­tinique and St Mar­tin, which are still not avail­able,” James said.

When pressed on who cov­ered the costs of the flight, giv­en that he was on THA busi­ness at the time, he an­swered, “I had fam­i­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to at­tend to on Mon­day and Tues­day and I had to make an arrange­ment, which I did pri­vate­ly. The THA did not pay. I am pay­ing for it pri­vate­ly.”

He con­firmed that four peo­ple came in on the char­ter.

When asked whether any­one chipped in to cov­er the cost of the char­ter, he an­swered, “I made a pri­vate arrange­ment. That is all I am about to say at this point.”

The flight dropped James and the oth­er THA of­fi­cial to To­ba­go and then came to Trinidad to drop off the ACS of­fi­cials.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, CAA di­rec­tor Fran­cis Reg­is con­firmed that an air­craft came in with four pas­sen­gers, but that there were ques­tions as to whether the air­craft had ap­proval to con­duct a com­mer­cial air­craft op­er­a­tion.

He did not want to say what were the next steps for the CAA but said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the flight plan.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day said he was al­so alert­ed about the mat­ter but not­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by the CAA. He de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

(With re­port­ing by Ke­jan Haynes)