By Peter Binose

Let’s hope that any airlines that are considering using the Argyle International Airport on the island of Saint Vincent the gateway to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and those most wonderful Grenadines islands take notice of this letter. I also hope that airlines are like the retail industry and have ethics about using a new airport destination that is directly blighted by Human Rights violations. “These companies should not turn a blind eye to known human rights abuses… especially when the companies consistently and affirmatively represent that they act in a socially and ethically responsible manner.”

Some sixty-one of the Argyle land owners have not been paid for their land which was compulsorily taken from them on the promise of early and fair payment. Now approaching nine years later they remain unpaid and the airport is due to open in a limited form in 2016 and in a full form in 2017. I would hope the airlines will be able to say “sorry can’t consider landing at an airport where the land was stolen from the land owners”.

When the airport opens may I suggest it is placard picketed ‘OUR LAND WAS STOLEN FROM US TO BUILD THIS AIRPORT’

Was it stolen? In my opinion it was because 6-7-8-9 years cannot even start to be considered a reasonable time to withhold payment for land acquired under a compulsory purchase and acquisition order? People have been born and died during these last nine years. Some youngsters never knowing the farmland and the Argyle farming community. Some of the owners have died unable to afford proper medical care because the government has not paid them for their land. It is not and it cannot ever be right in any form or for any reason not to of paid for the Argyle land. None of these people are wealthy land owners like the Gonsalves family, I feel sure at least one or two of the dynasty still is. There can be no excuse whatsoever for the government not to have put the money owed into an escrow account to be held if there were any disputes of ownership or title. The very top and bottom of the whole situation is that the government have not got the funds to pay the land owners. Why? Because they gave it all away to the Cubans who have taken 10 years to complete a 3 year project without any penalty clauses and according to Gonsalves without even a contract [that may well be untrue because I read in the Koche report that the Cubans are under contract]. I must add the Cubans took payment in Havana and the money paid to the Cubans has benefited the Cuban economy at the expense of the Vincentian economy. This whole Cuban debacle has gone a long way to bankrupting our little island state.

What other reasons may the airlines have for not even considering Argyle as a destination?

1/ Only enough hotels to service one 400 seat aircraft every two weeks.
2/ No emergency hospital within a reasonable distance of Argyle.
3/ No specialist medical services, such as a burns unit etc
4/ No rescue vessels for flights in emergency landing on water.
5/ No rescue helicopters.

Let’s get down to the facts. Saint Vincent is not a tourist destination and never will be, there is no real attraction or facilities for tourists. Even the hotel rooms are only about 500 in total, that is the size of one hotel in some other Caribbean islands. Buccament is now looking like a spent force and requires some upgrading already. The Grenadine islands are the place where the tourists will feel best suited with the white sand beaches compared with Saint Vincent’s black sand beaches and Buccaments artificial beach of white sand imported from Guyana. But the Grenadines and their spectacular white sand beaches are all tiny but pristine islands, they can never be like Barbados or Saint Lucia, they are restricted by their comparative postage stamp size.

Yet having upgraded the airport at Canouan to that of a Jetport able to land up to 220 seat aircraft, that Jetport remains unused commercially and is used only for a few personal small visiting jets. No airline wants to fly there, why? Because airlines are interested in numbers, filling aircraft to the max, they do not fly anywhere unless it is profitable to do so. That is going to include Argyle because there just will never be enough passenger traffic to make it a direct regular daily destination from anywhere. Most of Saint Vincent’s air traffic will still be via LIAT from other islands.

What does that all mean? It means that we have just spent so much money that our great grandchildren will still be trying to pay back the debts fifty years from now. It means that we didn’t need Argyle at all, because if our major tourist destination the Grenadines after several years still has not found an airline to service them at Canouan, and we could have extended Joshua out seaward to make that a jetport which no one would use either, we are deep in the doodoo.

We have just built an airport that we did not need at all. Saint Vincent Island is not, never has been and never will be a destination for mass tourism. We are nothing like Grenada, nothing like Saint Lucia or Barbados, we will never be like them and we can never be like them, that is all part of the dreams and lies fed to us by Ralph Gonsalves as a political savior for him and his family dynasty, but it will end up also being their downfall. Even those in the Diaspora have been fooled, those that we look up to who have gone away and made good and taken on what we all thought was a new and better outlook and intelligence, a kind of savvy which those at home lack. But it turns out they are no different, they themselves think they are, but when it comes down to it they may be better wrapped and presented, but deep down they are the same, they have the same ingrained ignorance and the inability to see who is a master liar and bs!tter. Because of personal greed in believing they will be able to fly from their local airport in Canada, the US and Europe directly to Argyle anytime they should so choose, regardless of the cost to the people who actually live in Saint Vincent. But that will not and cannot work it is a dream based on lies and deception fed to them and to which they were blinded because of their personal greed. Perhaps Argyle has been built so as they can get a charter flight home once every two years directly to Saint Vincent, that is great for them but it sure has created a hardship for Vincentians over the next 50 to a 100 years.

The hospital in Kingstown has no real emergency facility except in the sense of a cottage hospital style where a dozen emergencies can be seen daily and sometime patients sit for 16 hours to get treatment. No burns unit, scanning and Xray equipment which is more out of service than in. Grossly government underfunded a dirty stinking facility with secondary infection a threat to the life of everyone who visits there with an open wound. Drugs and dressings rarely available and families having to scour the countries pharmacies to try and get such drugs and dressings as their love ones require, that is hardly a situation that would be tolerated by an airline considering flying here. The hospital floods when it rains hard and water is known to run through the operating theatre ceiling at other times causing it to frequently be unusable. There is only one highway from the airport to the hospital which includes passing through Kingstown which at certain times of the day is gridlocked. The highway from Argyle to Kingstown is hazardous in itself with some sheer drops and no safety barriers. The road will be more hazardous when the airport opens with fuel tanker trucks carrying aviation and jet fuel to the airport. Safety barriers approaching Kingstown are damaged and lay unrepaired for the last 10 years on the approach to Kingstown. There are no hospital or government owned helicopters for sea or land rescue they have only recently got four decent ambulances which may well take over an hour to go to Argyle and the same or more to return to Kingstown. Hopefully there will be a purchase made before the airport opens of about eight ambulances to be permanently located at Argyle airport. In fact there are no helicopters anywhere in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, privately or publicly owned, even the Coast Guard are without such an aircraft. There are no search and rescue vessels available in the area or anywhere in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines capable of rescuing passengers from an aircraft downed in the sea, they just do not exist. We cannot rely on our coast guard, remember how they stood by whilst members of the public rescued school children from the sea and crashed van at Sandy Bay.

The sea in the Argyle area is Atlantic influenced with huge waves and most of the time violent waters. A person in the sea would perish in a very short time with the inherent sea conditions and the nasty rip currents that have already taken many a Vincentian life in the area. A series of search and rescue vessels should be located, manned and waiting at Stubs Bay beach area,that is a must before the airport opens. Others should be located at Bequia because the aircraft approach is directly over the eastern end of Bequia Island.

Haven’t I said all this before? Yes I have many times, and I will continue saying it and I hope the airlines take notice, I hope those in the Diaspora take notice also. I hope the tour and holiday companies take notice. I would like to apportion all the blame regarding this matter on Ralph Gonsalves but without idiots to believe his lies he could never have succeeded in fooling all of the people all of the time.

Just remember operating an international airport to be used by big wide bodied jets is not like running a jetport or an airport such as ET Joshua at Arnos Vale. Air traffic control cannot book flights in as landed which have not landed and have never landed and then go home, remember that? The loss of life and the huge delay in search and rescue that perhaps contributed to the deaths of those two young men.

Many different things must be put in place before any airline would want to fly to Argyle, or would even be allowed to fly there.

c/c

Lloyds of London

ICAO, JAA, FAA, EASA, CAA, IATA.

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Thomson Airways, American Airlines, Delta, West Jet, Air Canada, Avianca, Jet Blu.

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