Addu Airport was left undeveloped in the past 3 govts- Shareef

Ibrahim Shareef (Mavota) has said that the Addu City Gan Airport was deliberately left undeveloped in the governments of Presidents Ibrahim Nasir; Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Mohamed Nasheed.

Shareef said that Gan Airport was the best airbase in the region when the Britons left Addu. He said that the airport could have been developed then for a small cost. “If the airport was developed during that time it would have been easy. A state of the art international airport would have been developed,” he said.

Shareef said that Nasir failed to develop Gan Airport because of his envy and hatred for the people of the most southern four atolls. He added that Gayoom followed Nasir’s policies in this regard.

“I request the people to read the news of during that time and do some research on this. This is well proven by the news papers of that time. Addu people were relieved of the fear they have been coping for all those years when the amendment I proposed to the Peoples’ Majlis was passed. It was the amendment to annul the Act 38 of the constitution,” he said.

Shareef said that one of the most important development works is the land reclamation of Gan. “If Nasheed is person who seeks the development of Addu why did he not use the Queen of Netherlands for land reclamation of Addu when he used it for land reclamation of many of the islands? And what did the people of Addu gained as benefit from the convention centre build there? If only the Gan Airport was developed in instead of that then we would be seeing the best international airport in Addu City,” he said.