by Makeda Mikael
The Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority has been struggling for many years since the Director General Rosalind and his colleague lost their lives in the horrific earthquake in Haiti in 2010.
The next in line who assumed the DG position was almost at retirement and was forced to stay on long past his best years, and then finally, the current DG was sourced out of Trinidad via Doha where he wound up his last assignment.
After what seems like a long time settling the new DG into the job, it is clear that the standards of operating in a country like UAE are unlike those of small islands and their politics. Our rank politics which has torn our airport apart both in operations and in the physical land ownership (our airport is now owned by three entities, namely Government of Antigua, Antigua Hangars Inc.(Private) and CalvinAir Helicopters (Private).
This action making VCBIA one of the most tortuous airports to manage from ICAO operation standards which expect an airport to be on its own lands, or if not with properly institutionalized Agreements between the ‘owners.’
With a conundrum of their own making, the Government of Antigua/Airport and ECCAA have created a precedent ownership of land within an international airport, and need to register a Difference with ICAO. In order to do this there is a requirement for an agreement to be in place between private owners and the Government of Antigua & Barbuda, which has not yet been established.
The offices of ECCAA and the Ministry of Aviation need to cooperate in their work in assisting the increase of aviation assets of the island, using the proximity of an agency of dedicated aviation experts available to all of their queries. The old airport has been siting idle and will soon fall apart if not soon utilized.
Additionally the buildings within the and around the airport need to be utilized, as staying empty encourage rodents and mongoose take over, invading the controlled space. ECCAA now needs enlarged headquarters closer to the Ministry and the Airport both physically and intellectually.
The help of regional agencies should be supplied gratuitously to the small islands which they serve, but instead of ECCAA which is headquartered in Antigua has sat by for twenty years, without offering to research and act upon recommendations to bring the entire airport into a regulatory controlled space.
Although crooks have stamped their mark on the airport, little has been done by the authorities to avoid similar risks in the future.
The need for the OECS to grow their own regional agency chiefs could make for the ease of transferring technology and expertise between the agencies and the states without tension. Our history and its failure to hold together in a federation remain the platform from which we perform, “One from 10 is naught!”
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Notes From A Native Son Of The Rock! So that it becomes legitimate to ask, “Where is the Sistah coming from?” “Are you down with overcoming oppression?” These are assessment and evaluative questions that allow the interrogator to accurately pinpoint the responder’s location, whether it be a cultural or psychological location. As a paradigm Afrocentricity enthrones the centrality of the African, that is, black ideals and values, as expressed in the highest forms of African culture, and activates consciousness as a functional aspect of any revolutionary approach to phenomena. The cognitive and structural aspects of a paradigm are incomplete without the functional aspect. There is something more than knowing in the Afrocentric sense; there is also doing. Afrocentricity holds that all definitions are autobiographical.” – Dr. Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity, The Theory of Social Change!
Does The Queen of Sheba Really Care!
One of the saddest Historical Referent Points in Antigua and Barbuda was the creation and also the decommissioning of Runway 10! What does the BIO show! With the decommissioning, it showed a Government Bureaucracy and Bourgeoisie devoid of Vision and Strategic Thinking, “hardbound and hardheaded” with an educational process and behaviour to be good civil servants with their vocation “not to transform the nation but prosaically serve as a conveyor belt for capitalism.” (Fanon)! Their sights were compromised by the surrounding hills and the Eastern Atlantic, or more closer North Sound, after the most powerful and its Seabees had provided the cognitive, structural and functional space while in time displacing the original habitants of Winthrope’s Plantation! The Queen had not only a front row seat but was a major Policy Developer!
The desecration of Eve’s Garden and Lady Nugent’s Burial Grounds on which hallowed spaces and time, People of African Descent in Antiguan and Barbuda frolic merrily with nary a peep of those Historical Referent Points in SPACE and TIME! What does the BIO show! It showed an Intelligentsia and “Edge Up Arrivistes” who at their core possessed “a hedonistic mentality —because on a psychological level it identifies with the Western bourgeoisie from which it has slurped every lesson.” (Fanon)! The Queen sat beside the then PM!
Not very long ago, A North Atlantic Privateer doing business at Dickenson Bay, understanding the Historical referent Point in SPACE and TIME of that area where it was called “run a way bay” by enslaved Africans who sought freedom in the area because of the swamps and ecology while at the same time recognizing the inevitability of the grim reaper put his affairs in order so that his entrepreneurial efforts would fall in the hands of Antiguans and Barbudans! The Buccaneer realized that death rattle!
Some would ask: Were there no other People of African descent with the heft except Signature! What does the BIO show! Some would say: It showed that a Cadre of Government Adventurers in the early days of independence closely identified “with the last stages of the Western bourgeoisie. Don’t believe it is taking short cuts. In fact it starts at the end. It is already senile, having experienced neither the exuberance nor the brazen determination of youth and adolescence.” ― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth! The Queen was the Seller!
Your front row seat in helping to create the Historical Referent Points in Antigua and Barbuda is to be appreciated! You have toiled on the Plantation and should have peaceful enjoyment of your SPACE and TIME before the grim reaper knocks at your door! Keep on telling “your truth” recognizing “The Danger of A Single Story.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie!
“One of the key assumptions of the Afrocentrist is that all relationships are based on centers and margins and the distances from either the center or the margin. When black people view themselves as centered and central in their own history then they see themselves as agents, actors, and participants rather than as marginals on the periphery of political or economic experience. Using this paradigm, human beings have discovered that all phenomena are expressed in the fundamental categories of space and time. Furthermore, it is then understood that relationships develop and knowledge increases to the extent we are able to appreciate the issues of space and time.” – Asante!
Nuff Said!
Go Well!
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