Dear Editor,

Recently, the Piarco International Airport was again named the Best Airport in the Caribbean as declared by Skytrax 2022 World Airport Awards.

The airport also came third as the Best Airport in the Central America and Caribbean Region. The year prior (2021) the Piarco International Airport again topped the region as the Best Airport in the Caribbean at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2020-2021 and also secured 2nd and 3rd place for Cleanest Airport in the Caribbean and Best Airport in Central America and the Caribbean respectively.

In 2019 the Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (AATT) announced that the Piarco International Airport topped the region as the Best Airport in the Caribbean, as again declared by the Skytrax, 2019 World Airport Awards which was a significant achievement as it marked an improvement from the 2018 ranking where it was only passed by the Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica and the Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados.

Further to this, in relation to the Global Region – Central America and the Caribbean for 2019, Piarco International Airport was ranked by Skytrax as the third-best airport, edged out only by Panama’s Tocumen International Airport and Costa Rica’s San Jose International Airport.

In 2006, the Piarco International Airport was awarded The “Caribbean’s Leading Airport” by the World Travel Awards.

Other Caribbean countries main international airports that some years oust the Piarco International Airport for first place in awards and continuously compete like the Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica is named after Norman Manley ONH, MM, QC, a Jamaican statesman who served as the first premier and second chief minister of Jamaica. The Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados is also named after Sir Grantley Adams, QC, Barbadian politician, inaugural Premier of Barbados, first and only prime minister of the West Indies Federation and founder of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP).

The only other international airport in the twin-island republic is the ANR Robinson International Airport located in Tobago, named after the third  prime minister and third president of Trinidad and Tobago.  Tobagonian Arthur Napoleon Raymond “Ray” Robinson, SC, OCC, TC, who also served as the elected Member for Tobago. It is on these grounds that I call for the Piarco International Airport to be renamed after the late Basdeo Panday, Trinbagonian attorney-at-law, trade unionist, politician and actor who served as the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

He was the first person of Indian descent along with being the first Hindu to hold the Office of Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He was elected to Parliament as the Member for Couva North and served as the leader of the opposition five times between 1976 and 2010. He was a founding member of the United Labour Front (ULF), National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) and the United National Congress (UNC). He served as the political leader of the United Labour Front and the United National Congress and was president general of the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union.

Under his tenure as prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago whilst oil prices ranged between $9-11 USD per barrel, built the then new, state-of-the-art major expansion of the airport, which included the construction of a new terminal building and high-speed taxiways that would later lead to those accolades being bestowed onto his country.

Pioneering the visionary, bold and futuristic at the time, Piarco International Airport, built and designed with the intention to become the “gateway to the Americas”, it is only fitting to formally recognize the contribution made to Trinidad and Tobago and the CARICOM region at large by the giant of a man that is Basdeo Panday by renaming the Piarco International Airport to the Basdeo Panday International Airport.

Ishmael Tarouba

Via email

 

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