William Birkett returns to the Civil Aviation Directorate and replaces Anyelo Acosta

Manta airport delegation process must be carried out

Guillermo Lasso's government opted for a brigadier general in passive service to direct the Civil Aviation Directorate. The chosen one is William Birkett, who was already in that position during the administration of Alfredo Palacio.

Birkett replaces Anyelo Acosta, who held these functions since the Lenín Moreno government and remained in office in these first weeks of the Lasso administration.

The decision to appoint Birkett was known yesterday afternoon, hours after the Aviation Directorate made public that the process of direct delegation of the Eloy Alfaro airport in Manta had been declared void.

That delegation had been assigned last April, during the Moreno period, to the Korean public company Korean Airport Corporation (KAC).

Precisely, Acosta's last public act was this Thursday in Manta, where he traveled to explain the reasons why the airport process was declared void.

Acosta acknowledged that in the delegation process that was initially assigned to the KAC, some errors were made that caused the legal area of ​​the commission that was formed to outline the delegation processes with the Asian company to recommend the declaration of desertion to that process.

The official said that the Korean representative presented only a letter of commitment within the process, a simple guarantee that was one of the errors that caused the process to be declared void.

“If something happens in the process and it is awarded and these guarantees are not available, how can the State recover those values ​​that were immersed in a proposal,” Acosta justified.

Another error that caused this termination of the delegation was that the negotiation phase to complete this process should have taken place between May 19 and 20 of this year, but that occurred on the 21st, added to other errors.

The Lasso government has announced that a new process will be carried out. But it will not start from scratch, since the bases and all the inputs requested in the first instance are already in place and will be perfected with the support of the entities involved in the delegation process.

José Luis Aguilar, Undersecretary of Air Transportation of the MTOP, pointed out this Thursday that the Minister of Transportation, Marcelo Cabrera, has already announced to both the KAC and the South Korean embassy in Ecuador about the declaration of desertion of the delegation process.

Aguilar indicated that the KAC company would have no problems participating in the new call to delegate the Eloy Alfaro airport in Manta.

The announcement sparked reactions in this port city. Miguel Ángel Castro, executive director of the Civic Board of this canton, indicated that they expect transparency in the new process and that they fear that not everything announced will happen.

“We have supported the delegation because the former government (of Lenín Moreno) showed that everything had been done transparently, but we need answers now, a delegation process can last ten years, Manabí is not going to last 10 years without an airport,” declared Castro.

Agustín Intriago, mayor of Manta, expressed his concern about everything that happened and the time lost, but he hopes that the authorities in charge of the process will rule on what will continue.

But, in addition, the MTOP authorities announced that there are problems in the rehabilitation process of the airport. Last February, Moreno, without the complete work being completed, delivered only the new passenger terminal, but a few days ago he had to return to the temporary reception area for local passengers that was enabled after the April 2016 earthquake. .

The improvement of the airport has a cost of more than 26 million dollars, an item delivered through a loan with the Chinese government, and the work was assigned to the consortium China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) – China National Electronics Import & Export (CEIEC).

Aguilar indicated that there is a legal problem on the part of the consortium that forced the old terminal to be used again, in a rehabilitation that is already 70% complete and that about three million dollars in payrolls still have to be paid. , although some are already in the process of cancellation.

These legal problems would be resolved no later than the next week, and from that moment that the suspension of work due to legal issues is lifted, the company will have 90 days to complete the work completely.

“The contractor as such had certain legal problems and has forced the contractor to change its corporate name, it is a consortium that is made up of several companies and one of those companies went through a legal process and is reformulating that consortium formation,” Aguilar pointed out.