KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – This country has received a donation of $537,559.35 from Georgia, one of the country’s Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves visited during his 15-day trip to the Middle East and Europe from December to January.
Gonsalves said that the monies would be used to buy vehicles for the construction of the EC$652 million Argyle International Airport.
“I just got from the officials here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines the banking information, the first tranche of money for us, $537,559.35. The second tranche is going to come within a couple weeks’ time, over a EC$1 million to help to buy some trucks and so on …” Gonsalves said at a media briefing yesterday.
Leonardo Perez, consultant engineer at the airport site said in November that only 54 per cent of trucks at the facility were working while 40 per cent of the earthworks was incomplete.
He said that while he was criticised for trip to the Middle East and Europe, every Arab nation had expressed appreciation for his visit.
“Our ambassador at the united nation, Camillo Gonsalves tells me that every single Arab country, rich and poor, every single ambassador at the U.N., every single embassy contacted him to express their appreciation for what we had done, promising to work with us in our on-going development,” Gonsalves said.
“The Israeli embassy also did that and invited him (Ambassador Gonsalves) to go to Israel and said that they were sorry that they did not have the opportunity to take me to Jerusalem when I was there,” said the Prime Minister, who is expecting an invitation to make an official visit to Israel.