Elections affected govt’s action to swiftly suspend chartered flights, Information Minister says

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Information Minister Melford Nicholas (File photo)
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By Robert A. Emmanuel

[email protected]

Information Minister Melford Nicholas hinted that the general elections would have prevented the government from seeking to formally suspend chartered flights from West Africa.

During last week’s press conference, Chief Immigration Officer Katrina Yearwood told reporters that within the month of December, she would have made “several” recommendations to the government to halt the air route from Nigeria.

The route, which was opened initially between the government and Antigua Airways, was used by a secondary airline transporting Africans, believed to be called Hi Fly.

Minister Nicholas said that the government acted as soon as the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) made its own recommendation to the Cabinet.

“In the interim, we had general elections, and we had a question over where we were, so at the time when this matter came to the attention of the government, no further permission would have been granted for any flights to arrive here.

“But … once the election was over and the government was faced fully [with the issue] … we had the first notice from Caribbean IMPACS and at that particular point in time, we took a decision,” Minister Nicholas stated.

He further argued that between the last recorded flight from Nigeria on December 29 and when the government formally announced the decision to close the air route, there was “no further harm done”.

When Observer media sought to further clarify this issue immediately after Thursday’s press conference, Nicholas indicated that between the one-month gap, the issue was not deemed an emergency by the Cabinet.

“There was nothing about it that emerged about it that was an emergency; we were satisfied that we could have stopped any further chartered flights,” he said.

In late December, media revelations noted that at least two flights from Nigeria to Antigua were believed to have been carried out by Portuguese company, HiFly.

According to the Minister, the company “exploited” the arrangement made by the government towards Antigua Airways to transport hundreds of Africans to Antigua and Barbuda.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gaston Browne used his radio station to argue that airport authorities “assumed” HiFly and Antigua Airways were the same airline as they posed as a subsidiary of Antigua Airways.

“HiFly came in as an opportunistic charter which was not sponsored by the government and officials assumed that they were one and the same, when they weren’t, and they were given the approvals,” PM Browne explained.

However, Minister Nicholas remained adamant that the government acted as swiftly as possible, despite numerous concerns raised by the public over the flights and the number of African migrants whom Observer media reported struggled with accommodations after they arrived in November.

“As soon as it became apparent to us, when we were notified through Caribbean IMPACS of the trans-migratory patterns … we brought an immediate halt to the programme.

“I think we suspended the chartered flights after it became known that surreptitiously another actor … would have utilised the charter arrangement,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government seemed apprehensive into reaching out to the second operator to provide further clarity on their role in this situation, as Minister Nicholas expressed that they may not have done anything unlawful.

“If the air route was established and if they made an application to land an air charter here and that was done under lawful means, [although] there may be the surreptitious objective of exploiting the route that was established to facilitate the wilful migration of persons, I don’t know if we can say anything unlawful was done,” he expressed.

“Once the protocol was established having a charter flight using the assets of a chartered aircraft company, it had set up the opportunity for HiFly to do what they did,” he later explained.

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