The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty has as­sured that im­pend­ing land­slip and slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion works at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port will not de­lay the open­ing of the new ter­mi­nal in To­ba­go.

The Au­thor­i­ty re­cent­ly is­sued a re­quest for pro­pos­als for civ­il, earth­works and ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to un­der­take the project. A vir­tu­al site vis­it was sched­uled for Au­gust 3.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia last week, the Au­thor­i­ty said the in­fra­struc­tur­al works were “nor­mal” and will be car­ried out in the south­west­ern zone of the aero­drome. It stressed that the project is sep­a­rate from prepa­ra­tions for the new east­ern ter­mi­nal and will not af­fect its op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion and Trans­port Eli Za­k­our con­firmed that out­fit­ting of the new ter­mi­nal re­mains on­go­ing, through the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty.

The THA Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance has re­leased $10 mil­lion to­wards the out­fit­ting of the ter­mi­nal, which is ex­pect­ed to be unique­ly de­signed to re­flect To­ba­go’s rich his­to­ry and cul­ture.

Za­k­our said be­fore the ter­mi­nal is of­fi­cial­ly opened, there will be a full walk­through and flight sim­u­la­tion to en­sure all sys­tems are go for full op­er­a­tions. He said a date for the ter­mi­nal’s com­mis­sion­ing and walk­through will be an­nounced soon.

—Stephon Nicholas