Dear Editor,
I read Kit’s letter `Correia’s company and determination built the Eugene F Correia airport’ (SN, May 21, 2016) and wanted to establish just for the public record, I do not have any conflict with Kit Nascimento, either at a personal or at a professional level.
I therefore find his words quite sharp and riveting for a man who is supposedly just doing his professional work as a PR consultant for the Correia family.
I however, do agree with Kit, Mike Correia is one of the “finest CEOs” that is why I had personally agreed to support his appointment as the chairman of the private company’s OAI board. It is important to note that the EFC Airport Board of Directors was never established.
What is unfortunate is that I also thought I could have trusted him to run the affairs of our company, OAI while I was busy over the years struggling to build and transform Roraima Airways which was a startup company.
I in fact was too trusting of him which I now know was a massive mistake. When I finally discovered and understood what Mike was doing it was too late, his family and friends were into the shareholding of our company, OAI, with the clear objective of taking over our company and cleverly dominating the day-to-day operations of the airport, thereby creating the most unhealthy and acrimoniously anti-competitive environment I have ever witnessed in my 40 years as a professional aviator.
I wish to acknowledge that I was not as smart as Mike Correia nor was I as alert as I should have been. He is probably a better businessman than I am, since I lack the instinct to be shrewd and ruthless.
Kit went on to cast aspersions that my own achievements were accomplished by political patronage while the development of Ogle was clear of such political favours. Well, I would not even dignify Kit Nascimento’s slanderous assertions with a reply but only to say the following:
- Once again it leaves me to question his conduct.
- I wish to make it very clear that Kit Nascimento was not around the five original investors at the time we were conceptualizing the development strategy for OAI. He therefore is in no position to comment on the lack of “political patronage” as a contribution to the development of Ogle airport.
- I do not expect him to know the details and the behind-the-scenes work that was done.
- I do not expect him to know that the five of us were given the exclusive privilege of leasing the Ogle airport, not because of the Correia’s family wealth, but because of the diversity of who each of us was individually and what we represented as competitors, giving the Government the comfort and assurance that the airport would be operated in a fair and equitable manner where all of us would have an equal say maintaining the balance since we were also fierce competitors.
- Unfortunately what has evolved and what in fact obtains today is far removed from what the expectation was when the airport was leased to us.
- The European Union injected 2 million USD in the airport development not for the benefit of one operator but because they, too, felt it was for the benefit of Guyana.
As I close this letter, which I hope is the final letter I would need to write on this subject, let me simply establish the following facts.
- EFC Airport is a Government of Guyana facility which is leased to a private company called OAI with strict expectations on the part of Government.
- OAI was meant to operate the airport in a fair and equitable manner by appointing a management team that was professionally competent and very importantly, totally impartial.
- The fact that 9 of the 10 local aircraft operators at the airport have expressed unequivocally their lack of confidence in the management of the airport to be fair and impartial speaks for itself.
- Airports by their very nature are regulatory, therefore, it is a totally unacceptable situation to have one competitor regulating his competitors. The business of a country’s international airport is not like any regular company, airports must be managed by impartial managers. The quantum of shareholding should never give one operator more rights over the other operators who are their competitors.
Aviation-related investors must be assured of the security of their investment but they cannot be allowed to run the day-to-day operations of the airport because of the clear conflict of interest and disadvantage to the other airport aviation operators.
OAI as a private company no longer has the moral standing of impartiality to continue with the privilege of managing a public asset (EFC International Airport) in the public interest in an equitable and fair manner. ECF Airport belongs to the people of Guyana and we must never forget that fact.
Our government needs to establish a national airport authority under which the management of our country’s international airports must operate.
Yours faithfully,
Captain Gerry Gouveia
CEO, Roraima Airways