Former Antigua Finance Minister Supports Downsizing Of LIAT

JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – Former finance minister, Harold Lovell, is supporting moves by the Antigua-based regional airline, LIAT, to reduce its staff and downsize its operations in the face of continued economic challenges.

Last month Prime Minister Gaston Browne said he wanted to hold a meeting with the shareholder governments of the airline, after it announced plans to send home at least 180 workers and shift some of its operations to Barbados.

In a letter to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the Antigua and Barbuda prime minister, is urging that the financially strapped airline take no further action until his administration discusses the matter.

“We understand that from time to time we will have to make changes, we understand that LIAT is in a very precarious position, at the end of the day our economy is also in a precarious position and I just want to get all the facts together,” he said.

But Lovell, speaking on Observer radio here, said that the airline has no choice but to review and downsize its operations.

“LIAT has to downsize, I mean, I know perhaps, it’s politically incorrect for me to say that. But the point is if you run a restaurant and you have 50 tables and you employ, for arguments sake, one person per table, and then you have 20 tables – you would not keep the 50 employees when you only have 20 tables.

“There has to be something which allows us to absorb those workers or to have a strategy that’s going to deal with the excess capacity that you now have,” he said, indicating that the government should examine other options to provide employment for the workers likely to be laid off.

The former civil aviation minister said this could be done through creating business opportunities for complementary aviation services.

“If you incorporate a company, the business which would be the training of pilots, there is a market out there for that, because every airline that operates at the level of LIAT around the region they are using ATR’s and this is an opportunity,” Lovell said, noting that private investors, and not the government, should be involved in running the airline.

LIAT is owned by the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The major shareholders have been appealing to other regional governments to invest in the airline that provides the main mode of transport between the islands.

Lovell said Antigua and Barbuda cannot simply keep saying “no” to LIAT without putting forward a viable solution to its financial problems.