Al­though for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert said the new ter­mi­nal of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point, To­ba­go, should be opened by Ju­ly, the Gov­ern­ment is yet to say if this will be un­der­tak­en.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, when asked when the air­port was go­ing to be opened, said she could on­ly say it will be opened soon.

“There should be an Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Board in place very soon. There is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO), who would have been the project man­ag­er; they fall un­der Min­is­ter (of Trans­port and Avi­a­tion) Eli Za­k­our,” John said.

She chid­ed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, call­ing them ir­re­spon­si­ble.

On March 15, then-prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley held a cer­e­mo­ny to mark the prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the ter­mi­nal, with Im­bert giv­ing a pos­si­ble open­ing date of next month.

Con­struc­tion of the air­port ter­mi­nal be­gan in 2020 and there were some de­lays due to the pan­dem­ic, as well as the state ac­quir­ing land to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­pan­sion.

Im­bert said then the ter­mi­nal was de­liv­ered at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$6,000 per square me­tre. This, he said, was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the Caribbean av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$11,000 per square me­tre and the glob­al av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$13,800 per square me­tre.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, NID­CO’s chair­man Her­bert George said the cost of the ter­mi­nal stood at US$129,839,518. He added that the fi­nal con­tract sum was to be de­ter­mined fol­low­ing the out­come of the eval­u­a­tion of claims that are to be sub­mit­ted by the con­trac­tor, Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Ltd.

John, who re­cent­ly re­turned from To­ba­go, added, “What was spent was good tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, all right? And I spent a good ex­ten­sion of time with the Chief Sec­re­tary (Far­ley Au­gus­tine), and he is all about the peo­ple’s busi­ness and what this new ter­mi­nal build­ing will do for Trinidad and To­ba­go as a whole. “He’s plan­ning for when that old ter­mi­nal build­ing is va­cat­ed to use it per­haps po­ten­tial­ly as a space for pri­vate jets, be­cause he has, I mean, the vi­sion is very big for To­ba­go, as we spoke about a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach.”