In a notice to the public on Wednesday, the Public Infrastructure Ministry informed that the use of the Passengers Boarding Bridges at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) has been temporarily suspended.
According to the information posted on the Ministry’s Facebook page, the suspension was scheduled to facilitate additional work, which is a part of the Airport Expansion Project.
“The Ministry of Public Infrastructure wishes to advise that the use of Passenger Boarding Bridges at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) has been temporarily suspended. This scheduled suspension is required to facilitate the execution of other works of the Airport Expansion Project,” the Ministry stated.
Nevertheless, the Ministry assured that the works will be completed in a short timeframe as it expressed regret for the inconvenience caused to outgoing and incoming passengers.
This is not the first time that air bridges at CJIA are not functioning.
In May, despite the millions of dollars in improvements being made at CJIA, passengers on social media vented their frustration as they were forced to use the tarmac after one of the airport’s air bridges malfunctioned.
Also recently, airlines landing at the facility were forced to divert to Trinidad after the lights on the airport’s runway were not functioning. A few days later, an American Airlines aircraft suffered a blowout from a raised runway light at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), leaving over 100 passengers stranded.
The CJIA expansion project got underway in 2012 under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration when Guyana secured a US$138 million loan from the China Exim (Export-Import) Bank to fund the expansion and modernisation project— for which the Guyana Government was to contribute some US$12 million.
However, when the coalition Government came into power in 2015, the project was put on hold, but after discussions between Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson and China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), it was later announced that the project would be continued but a number of downgrades were done to the design.
The extension of works into 2019 comes in disparity to an earlier commitment by Government, whereby it pledged that the works associated with the expansion would have been completed by the last quarter of 2018.
