Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Grenada Airports Authority (GAA), Terrence Forrester has denied reports circulating in the country that he had dismissed Ronald "Pappy" Charles from the post of Acting General Manager of the Point Salines International Airport (PSIA).

Speaking to GRENADA TODAY on Tuesday, Forrester said that Charles who left the island on Friday night for New York was given permission to proceed on five weeks holiday.

"He (Charles) asked for his vacation leave and it was granted to him", Forrester told this newspaper.

The airport boss has confided to close associates that he might not been returning to the island when his "holiday" ends towards the end of next month.

Charles was seen flying out of the airport with about seven suitcases, fuelling speculation that he was moving back to his New York base.

The person occupying the post of Human Resources Manager at PSIA has been asked to act as manager in the absence of Charles.

Forrester admitted that differences had surfaced between both himself and Charles who has been acting in the post of General Manager of PSIA for the past two years.

He denied that there was a heated exchange in the last week between himself and Charles in the open air on the compound of the airport, located in the south of the island.

The PSIA Chairman, however, acknowledged that there was an open disagreement between the two at a meeting inside the Board Room at the airport because the two had "differences of opinion on a number of issues"...

Forrester did not give specific details of the altercation but hinted that the board had given directives to Charles, which the manager was apparently not carrying out.

He said: "We sat and the Board approved certain scope of work to do and it cannot be done. We just had to take action that was necessary to get it done and that (action) was approved by the Board".

Forrester said it was his management style that if people are giving tasks to perform they either do it or get out of the way.

He stated that the airport was damaged during the passage of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 and that a number of galvanise that had blown off from the high winds and should have been replaced was taking too long to be fixed.

"If you go there you will see that whenever it was raining the place was leaking all over. We just had to get it fixed", he remarked.

Forrester brushed aside other reports circulating in the country that he had tried to bring in his own crew to do the work on replacing the galvanise in order to benefit financially from the project. "The people who are doing the work are not associated with me", he quipped.

Forrester also denied that he was engaged in sand-mining activities at PSIA. He said the Board had awarded a contract to Classic Designs" to do some sand-mining in order to remove a build-up of sand that was creating security concerns and the people involved are not connected with him in any way.

Forrester stated that as Chairman of the Board of Directors he had stopped the sand-mining until the Contractor agreed to pay a certain sum to PSIA for removing the sand from its property.

This, he said might have led some people to believe that he was benefiting personally from the contract.

Forrester was adamant that he would not let this type of "propaganda" leveled against him preventing him from doing what was necessary in order to prepare PSIA for World Cup 2007 cricket.