Zakour takes over Cabinet responsibility for Caribbean Airlines

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our has sig­nalled a re­newed fo­cus on ac­count­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance at Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL), fol­low­ing the air­line’s for­mal re­as­sign­ment to his min­istry.

“My pri­or­i­ty is to ad­dress the air­line’s fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, strength­en op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery to the trav­el­ling pub­lic, while strength­en­ing the air­line’s role in na­tion­al, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” Za­k­our said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The state­ment comes af­ter a le­gal no­tice is­sued by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent con­firmed that Za­k­our had as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for CAL with ef­fect from April 2, 2026.

Ad­dress­ing how he plans to han­dle his new port­fo­lio, Za­k­our said trans­paren­cy at the air­line will be crit­i­cal.

“There must be a clear fo­cus on ac­count­abil­i­ty as we work col­lec­tive­ly to en­hance per­for­mance and po­si­tion Caribbean Air­lines for sus­tain­able growth. I look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with the board as we move for­ward,” he said.

The move marks a sig­nif­i­cant shift in over­sight of the State-owned car­ri­er, which had long been un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty has now been re­moved from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, end­ing an ad­min­is­tra­tive arrange­ment that spanned mul­ti­ple ad­min­is­tra­tions, in­clud­ing pri­or to 2015.

The re­as­sign­ment was made un­der Sec­tion 79(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, with Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo act­ing on the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The tran­si­tion has raised ques­tions about the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er strat­e­gy for the na­tion­al car­ri­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en CAL’s on­go­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and re­liance on State sup­port.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the arrange­ment say the air­line’s long-stand­ing place­ment un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance was large­ly due to its heavy fund­ing re­quire­ments. The Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly re­quired fi­nan­cial co­or­di­na­tion to sup­port an en­ti­ty of CAL’s scale.

Con­tact­ed on the shift yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “The move­ment of CAL to the Min­istry of Trans­port is a log­i­cal and prac­ti­cal one. The Min­istry of Trans­port al­ready has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all avi­a­tion mat­ters, in­clud­ing Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty and Na­tion­al He­li­copters, so the CAL has been more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly placed in the in­dus­try-re­lat­ed min­istry.”

The change in min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty comes at a time when Caribbean Air­lines con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial head­winds.

These in­clude volatile fu­el prices due to the war in the Mid­dle East, stiff com­pe­ti­tion across re­gion­al routes, and the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of pan­dem­ic-era loss­es.

Op­er­a­tional con­cerns have al­so been a point of con­tention.

In Au­gust last year, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a blunt warn­ing to CAL’s man­age­ment to “sort out the mess” with­in two years or risk los­ing their jobs. She crit­i­cised the air­line for spend­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $60 mil­lion on au­dits by Ernst & Young and Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) de­spite main­tain­ing a size­able in­ter­nal fi­nance team, as well as for fail­ing to pro­duce au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and con­tin­u­ing to op­er­ate un­prof­itable routes.

Adding to the pres­sure, Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­tiga­tive desk re­cent­ly re­port­ed that since CAL’s 2011 ac­qui­si­tion of Air Ja­maica, the air­line has in­curred loss­es ex­ceed­ing TT$1.7 bil­lion (US$255 mil­lion) tied to that op­er­a­tion.