Skerrit indicates no certainty as to when intra-regional travel woes will be solved

Black Immigrant Daily News

Based on remarks from Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, it seems that the shareholders of LIAT 1974 Ltd are nowhere closer to resolving the travelling woes currently being experienced by travelers following the collapse of LIAT.

“It is an ongoing discussion. We have mandated the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to explore and to examine the current challenge that we have and to come up with some recommendations on how we can overcome the travel issue of intra-regional travel,” Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told reporters at the end of the 44th CARICOM summit in the Bahamas.

LIAT has a history of financial problems but the gravity of the situation became even more glaring during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic when the airline was forced to shut down in July 2020.

Skerrit told reporters the matter had been discussed during the summit and the leaders had received an updated report from the CDB.

“Amongst ourselves, we have also discussed a number of actions we believe we can take immediately to help resolve the current challenge we have. The reality is we all miss LIAT in the Caribbean, an airline that was chastised by so many of us, but now we understand and appreciate the important public good LIAT espoused for so many decades and so we are looking at what kind of construct we can bring to play recognizing that there are existing companies that are servicing our islands,” he said.

Skerrit said the Caribbean countries are looking “at how we can work with those existing entities to seek to alleviate the current challenges”.

The airline is owned by the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

A downsized version of the carrier has been operating a reduced schedule with a limited workforce since November 2020.

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