STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The full open­ing of the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go is get­ting clos­er to re­al­i­ty.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said one of the key as­pects of the $1.2 bil­lion project near­ing com­ple­tion is the run­way.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, John said work is apace in Crown Point, but she will be vis­it­ing the is­land in two weeks for the pos­si­ble sub­stan­tial com­ple­tion of the run­way.

John said she will be ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our.

On March 15 last year, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, days be­fore re­sign­ing, held a prac­ti­cal open­ing of the air­port and toured the new ter­mi­nal.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was al­so op­ti­mistic that the ter­mi­nal would be ful­ly utilised in a mat­ter of months.

“We ex­pect, there­fore, that bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, the first plane with pas­sen­gers can utilise this new ter­mi­nal build­ing in Ju­ly 2025. We will all work to­geth­er to make that hap­pen,” he said at the prac­ti­cal open­ing.

How­ev­er, John said there are many crit­i­cal works still in­com­plete.

“The air­port wasn’t opened. It wasn’t fin­ished. You can’t open an air­port if the run­way isn’t fin­ished.

“They are paving the run­way right now. The work nev­er stopped. The prime min­is­ter then would have ac­cept­ed sub­stan­tial com­ple­tion of the build­ing. You can’t have an air­port with­out a run­way, can you?”

John said the scope of work is no sim­ple task and must meet in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion stan­dards.

“The paving has to be com­plet­ed and then cer­ti­fied ... They don’t on­ly re­port to the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. What comes in­to that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion As­so­ci­a­tion, be­cause if some­thing hap­pens to a for­eign air­line here, then we are in prob­lems, they will close it down.”

She said of­fi­cials from the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co), which is man­ag­ing the project, are in To­ba­go twice a week.

She said Nid­co chair­man Neil Dook­ie, a civ­il en­gi­neer, is tak­ing a hands-on ap­proach and is on site reg­u­lar­ly.

“I get re­ports all the time. I have com­mit­ted to go up there in about two weeks’ time with the Min­is­ter of Trans­port to see whether they could ac­cept prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the run­way.”

She said there are oth­er crit­i­cal as­pects of the project still to be com­plet­ed, but an­tic­i­pates those to be fin­ished by ear­ly April.

To­ba­go tourism stake­hold­ers are keen­ly look­ing for­ward to the air­port be­ing ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

At a func­tion last Fri­day to launch the Sixt Car Rental branch in Bon Ac­cord, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Regi­nald MacLean ap­pealed for the open­ing of the air­port.

The new air­port has a ca­pac­i­ty for three mil­lion pas­sen­gers an­nu­al­ly, and MacLean said he is ea­ger to see the fa­cil­i­ty max­imised.

“We need to get back to where we were in the ear­ly 2000s and late 1990s, where we had 95,000 in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers to To­ba­go,” he said.

“The lo­ca­tion they (Sixt) chose is per­fect be­cause the air­port ter­mi­nal is right next door. Mr (trans­port) Min­is­ter, we want it opened. I have been ask­ing for that since you all got in­to of­fice ten months ago, and we would like to see it hap­pened. We don’t want it to rust and fall apart be­fore we ac­tu­al­ly opened the fa­cil­i­ty.”