LOOP NEWS: Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne has confirmed that the four major shareholders of LIAT 1974, have taken a collective decision to liquidate the embattled regional carrier. CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR WHATSAPP GROUP FOR NEWS UPDATES.
The decision was taken when all major shareholders of the cash-strapped regional carrier met virtually to discuss the future of the airline on Tuesday.
Earlier today (Wednesday)Prime Minister Gaston Browne told reporters that LIAT is considered by heads as a public good, a social good “that contributes significantly to regional connectivity and makes a net positive economic contribution to regional economies.”
He said national commitments were given in support of a new, efficient and expanded LIAT 2020, “to satisfy the immediate regional travel demand.”
PM Browne also said that those present at the meeting also agreed to engage the services of an aviation consultancy firm, to develop a long-term plan to ensure the sustainability of LIAT and the provision of affordable air transportation.
Meanwhile, pressure is still mounting amid demands for shareholder governments to settle outstanding payments owed to former LIAT employees.
Hundreds of LIAT workers were terminated in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the airline’s long-standing financial woes by grounding it for several months.
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Typically, this PM has again not given priority to the settlement of severance for the long suffering workers. Please call the election. A promise from the UPP is still a whole lot better than the nonsense presently being meted out.
Yet again another virtual meeting and not one word on all those ticket holders money Liat have taken and not provided a service this could amount to be robbery along with fraud taking money for a service and not providing and not refunding it,it’s those customers who kept liat in the air and it’s those same people who you would be expecting to take they hard earned money to book flights again with liat you believe because it’s there we will used it but your wrong it’s been over 2 years and we been getting along without you right now I don’t even think if I get back my money from liat that I would be flying with them ever again.
It would be a waste of money to once again hire a consulting firm to tell us what we already know. And they do not come cheap. What the governments of the Caribbean need to agree upon, as Prime Minister Browne puts it, is a method of sharing the cost to the carrying capacity of the Island. We cannot marginalize the small Islands to satisfy the larger ones. They also need the airlift, which they will not be able to afford if we simply charge the cost by route. Let us take the method by which we share the cost of the CCJ. Maybe that can work. Or some form of it. And let’s have a rotating Head Quarter if that is a sticking issue. But I think airlift between the Islands should become an Essential Service that should be provided throughout the Caribbean. And we need to do the same for Sea Freight. We cannot depend on North American Shipping lines to bring our goods through the Islands. And we need to have rates for shipment of goods of Caricom Origin and goods from outside. For this should only benefit our own manufacturers and farmers.
LOCATION LOCATION might be liat biggest problem right now most people interested in investing with liat right now but not based in Antigua will sound like a bummer for the people of Antigua but it’s true to much has happen that needs accountability and from what I’ve seen the government of Antigua want to rush forward with out some sort of accountability for all those millions of dollars and asking for governments and private sectors to invest in a lame duck yes we need air lift in the region badly but still to many un answered questions.
Corrupt governments touching anything, corrupts everything it touches.
Nobody should be surprised that Liat has financial woes.
A regional airline should be a private business that is run for profit.
Every time socialist leaders get involved with any project, their socialist mindset manages to screw it up. How many failed examples of socialism at work do you need to see before you’ll accept that socialism doesn’t work in the real world.
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