CJIA – Not again

Sep 09, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – So, the government is going to spend $82 million to ‘fix up’ the baggage area at the ongoing, always going, renovations of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA).  When is this going to end?  Will it ever end with these so-called ‘fixes?’  No Guyanese should hesitate for a second about what is going on here: fix after fix is being hung the necks of Guyanese taxpayers at the cash cow and milking cow that the CJIA has become for the calculators in the PPPC Government.

The CJIA has been made into a 24/7 cash register for the operators in the PPPC Government, whose eyes are always on the lookout for a juicy opportunity. The baggage area is the latest sweet spot that has been identified by the government for attention.  It is interesting how these things unfold, and become an established fact of hard, gritty Guyanese life.  For years, travelers coming into CJIA suffered all types of anxieties over their baggage and harbored some nervousness about the uncertainty of their luggage being collected with contents intact, or being collected at all.  Though it took years, there has been some improvement relative to baggage security and pilferage in the baggage area by the handlers and others that were part of these rackets that plagued passengers.

With the baggage collection improvements in mind, travelers could finally breathe a sigh of relief.  Now, as they say, there is no rest for the devil, for no sooner had the civil authorities wrapped their arms around what was going at the ground level, that a new form of thievery is now showing its face.  To be more accurate, it is now so new, for thievery and banditry have been as old as the existence of governments in this country.  When all is said and done with this new $82 million fix by the PPPC Government, it is that the celebrations continue at the CJIA with taxpayers victimized so many times with this single project that is not only past numbing, but also now countless.  For Guyanese, there is this reality: they are getting robbed on the ground, then they are being from the top floor.  This should not be interpreted that the middle floors are exempt from the swindles that go on in this country.

Today it is the baggage area for a cool $82 million, and this is at a newly renovated airport.  What happened? did somebody fall down on the job, and neglected to include the baggage area in all these con jobs that are being introduced to the public in bits and pieces, multimillion dollar ones?  What is next on the drawing board of schemes for the CJIA, a $20 million flowerpot enhancement project?  Or digging up the runway and starting over from scratch, since that would involve some handsome sums?  The point is that this is madness, and that what is supposed to be an expansion project just keeps expanding and expanding into eternity.  But with one crucial difference: each new PPPC Government concoction costs Guyanese several tens of millions more.

When the total stops and starts with lost time and extra cost, the new millions for some overnight brainwave, old areas that should have been done with, it is definite that consulting with the Guinness Book of World Records would be in order.  We cannot help but to ask ourselves if there has been another project anywhere where the brazen and subtle skullduggeries have run so rampant and for so long.  This CJIA project has been more than about work in progress, it is about the art of government paralysis for the purposes of its orchestrators.  On each occasion that there is the conclusion that we have heard the last of monies being spent on the CJIA, up comes one of these jack-in-the-box announcements, as if on some form of PPPC Government timer.

This long-running CJIA has been such a sweet deal that not just one government has overseen its expansion works, but several.  Each government has enjoyed its own long season at the CJIA expansion trough.  All things considered, the CJIA project has become the billboard for governmental shenanigans and wholesale skullduggeries under the fraud of serving the people.

• Editorial, Government, Guyanese, PPPC, Register