By Sue-Ann Wayow
ENERGY Minister Stuart Young has slammed Caribbean Airlines pilots for making the decision to call in sick over the weekend causing the airline’s operations to be severely affected.
Their actions not only caused hundreds of passengers to be stranded but also caused huge economic losses, he said, urging those taking industrial action to think about others as well.
Not only citizens were affected but also the foreign customer base, Young said.
He was speaking during the opening ceremony for the Cascade Community Centre on Monday.
The MP for Port of Spain North St Ann’s West said, “There is nothing wrong with persons having a desire for more, but it is how you go about making those claims on the limited pot. And for a handful of pilots to have done what they did … a literal handful and the repercussions and effects that will now have on the Caribbean airline, it really bothered me as a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.”
Young continued, “You must understand with an airline we have a wide, wide, customer net of international travellers as well and when you trace that back it is all about entitlement,”
Young, who is also a Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, said Government needed to deal with the affairs of others as well not just pilots.
He said the decision was made to pump taxpayers’ dollars into the airline just to keep it afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic, funds that were difficult to get adding that keeping a national airline was a luxury and not an absolute necessity.
Caribbean Airlines has apologised for the debacle saying it was working assiduously to have operations normalised.
The airline’s situation is also being reported by regional and international media including the Associate Times as the airline is the Caribbean’s leading airline.
