88 November 2015 - Business View Caribbean
to deal with it. We’ve been hoping for the time to come
when that situation would change.”
It seems that time has finally come. In December
2014, Prime Minister Gaston Browne announced that
the port would be completely rebuilt with a $225 mil-
lion investment from the China Civil Engineering Con-
struction Corporation (CCECC), which will be provid-
ing funding, manpower, and technical expertise. For
Telemaque, the news couldn’t have been timelier. “Not
only is it outdated in terms of the current style of oper-
ation,” he says, “but the port, itself, has deteriorated.
The piles are sinking; the seawall has thinned out to a
level where it’s dangerous; the container yard is undu-
lating all over due to depressions. And so the entire en-
vironment is at a point where it is pretty unsafe to be
operating there, at present.” In fact, in October 2013,
the port administration building on the key had to be
evacuated because it was slipping into the ocean and
starting to collapse. To this day, administrative person-
nel are working out of temporary quarters.
According to Telemaque, construction should start
sometime this December or next January. “And in
three and a half years, we should have a brand new
terminal,” he declares. “Because the port in Antigua is
a decent sized port, we’ll be able to build the new port
in sections, so we can easily start off on the western
side and continue towards the eastern part of the port,
one section at a time. So we’ll probably do it in three
sections. We will not see any interruption in terms of
the receiving and discharging of vessels, while we con-
struct the new environment, but there will be some
challenges. Nonetheless, we’re still going to see that
the goods and services required to run the country are
imported and exported.”
But Telemaque’s vision for the new port in St. John’s
