More equipment needed to complete international airport

More equipment is needed if the international airport at Argyle is to be completed by 2012.

This disclosure was made by Chairman of the International Airport Development Company (IADC), Dr Rudy Matthias, as he spoke on an interactive radio programme on Sunday.{{more}}

“The earthworks are substantial… and we do need more equipment. Unless we have (that) equipment, we cannot complete the earthworks for the runway on time.”

To address this, Dr Matthias said the IADC is in the process of buying more equipment, as they need far more trucks than they have at present.

“If you go on the site, you will notice that we have a number of bulldozers and excavators and loaders. Many times, these loaders and excavators are sitting in an area where they are loading, waiting on the trucks to come back.

“Ideally, you would want the trucks to be lined up waiting to be loaded to go deposit the material where it has to be deposited.”

In addition to the trucks, the IADC also plans to buy two scrapers, “because these are very efficient machines and much of the work in the second kilometer involves scraping off the top, gently scraping off the topsoil to take it down to the level we want to achieve.”

Dr Matthias said the 37 pieces of new equipment provided by Venezuelan government in May and June last year were far fewer than the number requested. “We are extremely grateful for the number of pieces they have sent, but we need to supplement those, and we are going to do that from our own resources until Venezuela is able to provide the funding for us to cover the … pieces that we are going to add.”

“Obviously, we don’t want to build the terminal building and other landside facilities and have them there and the runway is incomplete. We have to synchronize the completion of both the runway and landside facilities,” Dr Matthias said.

The cost of the earthworks, estimated at EC$279 million, will be borne by governments of Cuba and Venezuela.