MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Air Link for Saint Helena.
Plans to build its first ever airport for the remote Atlantic Island of Saint Helena have taken a major step forward. British companies and organisations interested in the project were invited to register their interest by the deadline of May 2nd, with a decision expected later this year.
An airstrip is regarded as necessary to halt the decline in its economy and its population of five thousand. Many of the islanders have been immigrating to other parts of the world, especially the Falkland Islands, to seek jobs and a better life.
The airport is projected to be built by 2008, to allow air services to Cape Town, taking only four hours, compared with five days by sea.
The Governor of this British Overseas Territory, Mr David Hollamby, says that an air strip is the only way to reverse the Island's decline and that technical advance now make it technically feasible.
He says Saint Helena has been losing population fast. Salaries are low and the cost of living is not cheap as it relies on costly imports. Its few exports include tuna, and coffee. But there is valuable potential for tourism, whose attractions include fishing, diving and golf. A new hotel is needed to make tourism viable and generate funds to help pay for the airport. So interest is expected from hotel operators as well as civil engineers. The tender process is being overseen by a London management consultancy, GIC.
The Governor says: ''The only way I feel we can start the economy picking up again is by having better access and building sustainable tourism''.
The estimated cost of this challenging construction project is forty-million pounds (about sixty million dollars). The British Government has agreed to contribute twenty-six million pounds (about 40 million dollars), which would be the cost of replacing the present mail ship by 2010.
Saint Helena has always previously been linked to the rest of the world by sea since its discovery more than five hundred years ago by the Portuguese. It became famous as the place where Napoleon was exiled and died in 1821.
It became an important staging post for ships with up to 1,500 vessels a year calling during its busiest period. Up to 1977 the British territory relied upon regular visits from the Union-Castle mailships sailing between Southampton and South Africa. In recent years it has been served by a single ship subsidised by the British government, calling only a few times a year.
Ascension Island, the essential staging post for the air link from the United Kingdom to the Falkland Islands, is administered from Saint Helena.
Harold Briley, (MP) London
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