THA's London upset over air bridge

Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Orville London has slammed the inefficiency on the domestic air-bridge. He said the situation where people had to wait four to five hours to get on a flight because one aeroplane is servicing the route can no longer be tolerated.

“Enough is enough is enough!” he declared Sunday while addressing a crowd of some 500 persons at the annual convention of the People’s National Movement’s (PNM) Tobago Council at Bishop’s High School, Tobago. “It is happening too often, too regularly, and people are making too many excuses,” he said. London said he and Tourism Secretary Neil Wilson would be seeking an urgent meeting with the Minister of Transport and representatives of Tobago Express and BWIA Express over the “scandalous situation.” He stressed that the whole question of transportation/communication between Tobago and Trinidad was “a burning issue which we would have to address, whether we have to use ‘hard ball’ or not.”

In fact, London stopped just short of declaring that the Tobago Express, the airline currently operating the domestic air-bridge, could not adequately service the route. But he said: “I want to make it public, that we can no longer tolerate a situation where we do not have consistent and reliable service.” London explained: “Every time we meet the people they give us some kind of idea as to what is needed, and, what frustrates me, is that the last time that we spoke to them they indicated to us that they did not have enough ‘planes.” He continued: “Mrs Joan Yuille-Williams and Mr (Rennie) Dumas who are in the Cabinet will tell you, the Cabinet of Trinidad and Tobago put out hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure that one of the planes that they had mortgaged (BWIA) to Bumpad Air was made available to them. And you going to tell me...that you said that will give you four planes, and we having people stranded in Trinidad for four and five hours because one plane running?” “That is not satisfactory, and we in the THA, and we in Tobago, cannot and will not accept that. Enough is enough is enough; too many excuses for too long!” the THA Chief Secretary declared.