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ASL never claimed the order to stop works at OAI was tantamount to discrimination

Dec 07, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
In an article in Sunday 5th December edition of Kaieteur News, derived mainly from a lengthy press release issued by Mr. Kit Nascimento of Public Communications Consultants Ltd (PCCL), acting on behalf of Ogle Airport Inc. (OAI), the article mentioned that Ogle Airport management had “slammed” Air Services Ltd (ASL) and strongly refuted accusations that orders to stop construction were “discrimination”.
Well, I guess that PCCL and OAI must find a way to show that ASL is wrongly claiming that we are being discriminated against by the Board of OAI.
The fact is that at no time, either by any form of communication with OAI or via our two press releases to the print media that we ever claimed that order to stop works on land allocated to us was tantamount to discriminations.
I quote from ASL’s press release of 30th November, 2010 sent to the media including Kaieteur News, “Even though OAI may appear to be doing the right thing, we feel that ASL is being discriminated against by the Board of OAI.
The reasons are many”. This was followed by six reasons. Not a single one mentioned the stopping by OAI of “construction works”.
In fact the number one and main reason given was OAI’s refusal to grant us a lease of an additional one acre plot adjoining the already approved two acres and land that is available for lease.
We applied since the middle of June, 2010, almost six months ago.
In a previous statement given by OAI, the PRC said such applications normally take from three to eight months.
We feel that that time is excessive. In fact the approval for the earlier lease of two acres only took two months.
OAI has said that several attempts were made to get ASL to sign the lease agreement for the two acres. We denied even receiving a notice in any form to sign the lease. So today, 6th December, we sent for the document.
Lo and behold, there was no lease document ready to be signed as the surveyor’s plan has not yet been submitted! This survey was done a few months ago.
Most of OAI’s release deals with procedures and alleged breach of such procedures by ASL.
But due to the length of time that certain matters are taken, compromises are made in the interest of expediency.
One such was when Mr. Mekdeci, CEO of OAI agreed for us to do land clearing and preparation pending the signing of the lease.
So far that is all that we have been doing – clearing, filling the swampy land and digging drains. We also had to build a curb wall to protect the filling.
The photograph published in the paper, and our application to construct a “flat mat concrete easting”, contrary to the views of OAI, are in fact consistent with the construction of a car park.
It has also come to our attention that others may be or were involved in construction without the necessary permits demanded of us.
It should also be appreciated that ASL, despite having more than 16% of the share capital in OAI, was not elected to the Board at the last AGM, whilst others with only a small percentage were (free and fair elections, I guess); as a result we are not in a position to influence or even aware of what is taking place at the Board level.
Mr. Editor, this whole problem can be easily resolved by OAI just approving our application for the one acre plot after which we will be in a position to move rapidly to satisfy all conditions for construction.
Navin Hardowar
Personal Assistant to the Managing Director

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