A row could be brewing in the country’s aviation sector over just whose responsibility it is to maintain the country’s many interior airstrips following a pronouncement by former Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Chairman Hugh Denbow last week that it was not central government’s responsibility.
Denbow’s statement provoked a sharp response from the Aircraft Owners Association of Guyana (AOAG) which described his comment as “quite extraordinary” and “completely unacceptable.” The AOAG response declared that Denbow’s assertion had departed from his “previous public professional position when he chaired, in 2013, the National Economic Forum Sub-committee, which recommended to government a National Aviation Policy and Action Plan for Guyana.”
The statement came almost two weeks after the September 17 commissioning of the Beechcraft 1900D owned by Trans Guyana on which occasion the company’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Correia had called—not for the first time—for government to carry out upgrading works on interior airstrips.
The statement noted that government’s responsibility included the maintenance of public infrastructure including “roadways and bridges, drainage and irrigation, river stellings and docks and… hinterland community airstrips… for which we pay taxes.”
It alluded to an Aviation Action Plan which it said set a number of significant priorities for which the government should take responsibility, amongst which are the implementation of a development plan by government for “upgrading and extending of selected hinterland airstrips.”
In his September 17 address at the commissioning of the Beechcraft, Correia had said that while the AOAG had worked with government over many years under the National Competitiveness Strategy “to identify all of the main airstrips which are in need of priority rehabilitation and maintenance” its request for US$7.5 million, to be invested over a 3-year period, at least, to put us back on track with the GAC days” had been “continuously ignored by our past minister.”
And according to the AOAG statement, while Denbow asserts that “private operators can do more to work with the government to achieve desired results,” private aircraft operators “have readily continued to place their technical expertise and experience completely at the disposal of government in setting the priorities and in recommending the efficient and professional development of all active hinterland airstrips.
