Will CJIA afford a good first impression?

Apr 07, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is seminal reading. Today, it is still in demand by students and university lecturers alike. One economics lecturer set before his class the question, ‘Can development and underdevelopment be measured in quantitative terms?’ Simply put, it meant whether people can measure development and underdevelopment in the same way they count money or buildings or any material thing.
Guyana is a developing country, given that the developed world considered calling an underdeveloped country an insult to the country and its peoples. It suggested that somehow, the people were backward. It goes without saying that backwardness connotes certain qualities that do not speak well for the person or country so described.
Guyana is a developing country. No title of underdevelopment could explain the quality of people it graduated. Some of them went on to hold very high offices in the various developed countries. Many were offered chairs in foreign Universities and more than a few spearheaded scientific discoveries.
In fact, by attracting the skills from the developing countries, the developed countries helped ‘underdevelop’ these countries. Rodney concluded that one could measure underdevelopment by the number of schools, hospitals and other social facilities that exist.
The Cheddi Jagan International Airport is a very good measure of Guyana’s underdevelopment. For one, whenever two or more airplanes land, the immigration services are put under tremendous pressure. The number of immigration officers to deal with the 300 or 400 people that would disembark from two or three aircraft is fewer than a dozen.
Those who have been caught up in this situation have complained. It might have been this situation that prompted the expansion of both the terminal building and the runway. The government had said that the airport terminal building had outgrown its capacity.
We now head to what could be the biggest influx of people to descend on the airport at any given time. Unless the flights are staggered—and one cannot hope for that possibility since the various airlines have landing schedules at the other airports—then one can expect a crush at the immigration section of the airport.
To its credit, the airport management has begun to make for an even better transportation arrangement at the airport. They have succeeded to remove the haggling of taxi drivers from the exit point. The management says that this is intended to protect the passenger who in the past was subjected to the pulls and shoves of clashing taxi drivers.
Today, the system is such that if someone needs a taxi that person would be directed to the first taxi in the line. There are more advantages to this arrangement, least among them the identity of the driver who picked up the passenger in the event that something should happen.
But the immigration arrangements still demand urgent attention. It is physically impossible to expand the immigration processing point. This could see people taking a long time to be processed. Needless to say, this could have an impact on the way people view Guyana in the first instance. As the saying goes, the first impression one gets is the lasting one.
The promise of an influx is real. This can be supported by the bookings of all the rooms in the hotels; by the demand for lodging in the various bed and breakfast arrangements, and by the number of people who now report that they are about to see relatives they had not seen in decades.
Minister Nicolette Henry has said that she has been holding meetings with the Ministry of Public Security about the situation. She said that from assurances, the situation would not be as horrendous as expected. There are other possible hiccups. For one, all the borders crossings would be busy. But this is a good thing. One could see the economic spin-offs.

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Will CJIA afford a good first impression?

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