The passage of time and the unfolding evidence of some crucial directions in which Guyana’s development appears to be heading underscores the importance of the country’s aviation sector and more particularly the Eugene F. Correia International Airport.
For a start the less than easy access to the interior regions of Guyana by means other than by air means that Ogle is not only critical to enabling the government to provide essential services to the various non-coastal residential communities but also to ensuring that the economic sectors – not least the extractive industries – located in the remote areas of the country are adequately serviced. The development of the Eugene F. Correia Airport has also made a significant difference to travel in and out of Guyana with not a few passengers expressing a preference for utilizing the smaller, less busy facility as against CJIA where both arriving and departing passengers must face, among other things, the challenges associated with having to traverse what is often the unpleasant intervening space between Georgetown and Timehri.
Travelers to Guyana from the region, not least those either employed at the CARICOM Secretariat or doing business there, have a particular appreciation of the advantages of the Eugene F. Correia Airport.
Ogle Airport – as Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson reminded us earlier this year – is state property though what cannot be denied is that what it is today is primarily through the efforts of the private sector, that is, the handful of investors comprising the aviation sector. One might add, of course, that, over the years, the Government of Guyana has been less than effective in its efforts to effectively run an aviation sector, whether this be in the realm of local and external services or in the area of local infrastructure maintenance.
What this means is that whatever else may be said regarding the upheavals that we have witnessed at the Eugene F. Correia Airport in recent times there can be no gainsaying the credit that is due to the Ogle Airport Inc. for transforming the facility. By the same token what cannot be denied is that the upheavals have been disruptive, counterproductive and have not been in the best interest of the facility and the critical services that it provides. In fact, there are those in the sector who appear to believe that the situation may have reached a point where the very services provided by the Airport might stand imperiled.
It is no secret that relations between the operators at Ogle had plummeted to a point of ugly verbal confrontation with the majority of operators comprising a newly formed body known as NATA seemingly squaring off against Trans Guyana Airways, whose CEO, Mr. Michael Correia is also the Head of Ogle Airport Inc. The ensuing upheaval appeared to intensify markedly after the government had announced its intention to re-name Ogle after Eugene F. Correia, a former aviation minister and a relative of the current OAI Chairman.
While the government did not allow a strident protest from NATA members to deflect it from its decision to rename the airport it nonetheless announced that it intended to conduct an inquiry into the operations at Ogle. That, we are told, is now done and dusted and we must now hope that the outcomes of the inquiry are made public as quickly as possible and that the requisite recommendations are implemented in short order.
The concerns that had been articulated prior to the announcement of the inquiry had mostly to do with OAI’s management of the airport and in particular what was felt by the majority of the operators at the Eugene F. Correia Airport to be the control over every aspect of its operations by Mr. Correia. One of the concerns that had been expressed had to do with the controls that a Correia-dominated OAI held over the allocation of operating space at Ogle. On the other hand arguments have been made in support of the extent of the Correia investment in the Airport, some of them going as far as saying that but for the financial input of the Correia Group the facility would probably not have been what it is today.
The view in some quarters is that the problems at Ogle are the result of the failure on the part of government to put in place the requisite oversight that was part of the original agreement with the aircraft owners and one expects that the outcomes of the inquiry will, among other things, seek to remedy the issue, a priori. A national facility as important to our domestic and international life as is the Eugene F. Correia Airport cannot be run in the absence of a structured official monitoring procedure which is what some of its critics have been saying. One expects too that by the time the recommendations of the inquiry are fully implemented those issues pertaining to the composition and the balance of power at the level of the OAI which appear to be at the heart of the problem as well as the conditions under which all of the operators at Ogle work will be attended to. It is really up to the government to make the wisest decisions arising out of what it understands to be the problems at Ogle, without, of course, creating the kinds of state-imposed restrictions that can render the situation worse rather than better.
