Claims in a recent newspaper article that the State Asset Recovery Unit (SARU), set up by government to investigate the use of state resources, had questioned whether the circumstances under which the Ogle Inter-national Airport (OIA) passed into private hands should not be reviewed have been dismissed by Michael Correia, Head of Trans Guyana Airways and Chairman of the body that manages the country’s second international airport.
Major decision-making within OIA is the responsibility of a seven-member board that includes two members drawn from the Correia Group and shareholders Malcolm Chan-A-Sue, Anthony Mekdeci (CEO of OIA), Architect Marcel Gaskin, Wings Aviation head Ronald Reece and Air Services Ltd’s Mazar Ally.
Roraima Airways boss Captain Gerry Gouveia was removed from the board recently in the course of what now appears to be one of the more recent upheavals at OIA.
An article published in the Sunday October 11 issue of the Guyana Times had claimed that the public/private sector partnership that spawned the emergence of the Ogle Airport was “under scrutiny.” But this was dismissed by Correia who told Stabroek Business in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that he had met with SARU Head Professor Clive Thomas who had made it clear to him that the management arrangements at OIA had not in any way come under the scrutiny of SARU. Prof Thomas had expressed similar sentiments to this newspaper in an earlier telephone interview.
On Tuesday, Correia, in his capacity as head of OIA, also produced a lease agreement between the Government of Guyana and OAI comprising 14 entities, mostly investors in the aviation industry, and including members of the local Aircraft Owners Association (AOA). The largest individual block of shares (38.94%) is owned by the Trans Guyana Airways, while entities that form part of the Correia Group of Companies including Caribbean Aviation Maintenance Services Ltd and the Caribbean Mining Company own up to 60 per cent of the shares in OIA.
Developed out of a rundown airfield largely through more than US$6 million worth of private sector investments, the Ogle International Airport, under the agreement with government, should benefit from an oversight body, headed by government-appointed officials. Critics of some operational aspects at Ogle have expressed concern over the inordinate delay in appointing the oversight body, though Correia told Stabroek Business on Tuesday that the OIA had been urging this course of action for some time.
Correia, however, is adamant that the absence of the oversight body, apart from not being the fault of the OIA, has in no way compromised the operational efficiency of the airport. In fact, the OIA boss told Stabroek Business, “Ogle Airport is quite possibly our best example of successful public/private sector partnership.”
Correia, however, has conceded that the presence of a review panel might well have avoided some of the issues that have arisen over the running of the airport and said that OIA still considered it an important instrument for providing constant reassurance that the airport was being run to high standards.
Ogle is no stranger to strained relations and controversies and the Correia group itself has had to face criticism from some quarters at Ogle over what some say has been its near complete control of the facility, an argument which Correia rejects out of hand. The aviation sector investor pointed out that apart from the fact that from a “business standpoint” the Correia Group was by far the largest investor in the operation, with the advent of the OIA operators at Ogle had experienced significant – “in some instances probably 100%” – growth in their operations.
At the September 17 ceremony to mark the commissioning of a recently acquired Trans Guyana aircraft President David Granger had said that the directors of the OIA should re-name the facility the Eugene F Correia Airport, after the country’s first minister of communications, shipping and aviation, and great uncle of the serving Chairman of the OAI.
In August this year, just prior to the death anniversary of the late president Forbes Burnham a letter had appeared in the Stabroek News recommending that the Ogle Airport be named after Burnham. This newspaper understands that the idea has resurfaced since President Granger’s remarks at Ogle and that this might be linked to perceptions that the renaming of the airport after the former minister might, somehow, hand the Correia Group a competitive advantage in the aviation sector.
At Ogle on Tuesday Correia told Stabroek Business that while all of the shareholders in the OIA had originally signalled their ‘no objection’ to the re-naming, a few, including Roraima Airways appeared to have changed their minds. “We did not ask for the renaming. We did not lobby the President. The idea came from him,” Correia said.
