SINT MAARTEN (SIMPSON BAY-AIRPORT) - Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication, Grisha Heyliger-Marten, is seeking long-term solutions to the repeated electricity interruptions at the Princess Juliana International Airport, which has not only affected operations to some extent, but also left a bad taste in the mouths of passengers and other users alike.
Responding immediately to reports of power outage at the airport Saturday afternoon, the second within a week, Minister Heyliger-Marten recalled that she had raised the issue with the CEO, Brian Mingo, during her recent walk-through to verify the state of readiness of the airport to receive delegates to the forthcoming FCCA 30th anniversary conference.
Meanwhile, the Minister has requested the Managing Director of the Princess Juliana International Airport Holding Company (PJIAH), Perry Wilson, to investigate what is causing the repeated failures of one of the airport’s back up generators and report back to her without delay.
“There is absolutely no reason why we should be experiencing these outages at the airport a few weeks to the stated opening of the terminal,” Heyliger-Marten said. “Besides the bad image this creates among travelers, it is simply not good for business.”
The Minister said she has been informed that there is a Maintenance Manual that establishes a protocol the airport must follow and has asked to ascertain if, indeed, that has been the case.
Furthermore, the airport management, in a public statement about the incident on Saturday, disclosed that the airport has four back up generators out of which three must run in sync to provide the necessary electrical power.
“We need to get to the bottom of this to find a long-term, systemic solution so that the airport will always have enough capacity to run the facility,” Minister Heyliger-Marten stated, adding, “it is totally unacceptable that in this day and age, GEBE or no GEBE, the airport should be suffering these kind of power interruptions without adequate back up kicking in on time.”
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