MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, Wednesday July 7, 2010 – Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has sought to assure that concerns regarding the deal her country’s Caribbean Airline recently inked with Air Jamaica will be “resolved to the benefit of both countries”.
After taking over the government in the twin-island republic last month, Persad-Bissessar’s administration had raised concerns about the agreement finalised in April, under the former Patrick Manning government, for Caribbean Airlines to take over Air Jamaica’s operations. Finance Minister Winston Dookeran had said there would be a review of it.
But responding to media questions about the matter, during a break in the sessions at the CARICOM Summit in Jamaica yesterday, the Trinidad and Tobago leader said her concerns surrounded issues of transparency since her administration was not aware of the details of the agreement, nor did it have an input in the decisions involving the takeover.
“We felt that we needed to get as much information as we could. We have received such information, we have a preliminary report from a committee that we had established to do it (and) the report is available,” she said, noting that there are still one or two areas which she wanted to speak with Prime Minister Bruce Golding about.
Those talks will be held tomorrow.
Under the agreement, the Trinidad & Tobago government is slated to contribute working capital to facilitate the merger while the Jamaican Government assumed the debt and covered the winding-up costs.
The Jamaica government owns 16 percent of Caribbean Airlines, Trinidad & Tobago’s national carrier, as part of the conditions for the airline taking over the lucrative routes of the cash-strapped Air Jamaica.