Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Emeris Gar­raway-How­ell and a team from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries yes­ter­day swooped down on two il­le­gal quar­ries at Ve­ga de Oropouche in East Trinidad.

Act­ing on in­tel­li­gence Gar­raway-How­ell and her team to­geth­er with po­lice of­fi­cers from the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force Cen­tral Area went to a re­mote area where an il­le­gal op­er­a­tion be­gan about two months ago.

The team, how­ev­er, was off to a rocky start as they did not get the prompt as­sis­tance and sup­port from the T&T De­fence Force as ini­tial­ly promised.

Two peo­ple who were ar­rest­ed near an ex­ca­va­tor on the first site.

Oth­er peo­ple es­caped by run­ning through a thick­ly forest­ed area.

Of­fi­cials said had sol­diers been on the ex­er­cise from the start the oth­er peo­ple would have been de­tained.

“We were told that they (De­fence Force) didn’t have any ve­hi­cles up and run­ning and ca­pa­ble of do­ing the job...but lat­er in the day, they ex­tend­ed their as­sis­tance, “ Gar­raway-How­ell told the Guardian Me­dia.

A watch­man in his 30s, who was hired to do pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty work on an ad­ja­cent par­cel of land, was al­so de­tained by po­lice but lat­er re­leased af­ter en­quiries.

At the sec­ond site, lo­cat­ed at an area called Five acres, was a mas­sive op­er­a­tion was un­cov­ered which is usu­al­ly ac­tive at nights. There were four ex­ca­va­tors on site but no per­son­nel.

Of­fi­cials said they have in­for­ma­tion about the peo­ple be­hind the il­le­gal op­er­a­tions and in­tend to pur­sue them.

Sol­diers were sta­tioned at both sites overnight to guard the equip­ment.

Gar­raway-How­ell said all equip­ment and tools lo­cat­ed on both sites will be seized and tak­en to the grounds of Camp Cu­mu­to.

The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands is­sued a warn­ing to il­le­gal min­ers. “Stop what you are do­ing. I am on the job now. You can face hefty fines and im­pris­on­ment. We are go­ing to pre­vent and stop this type of ac­tiv­i­ty.”

“This is cor­rup­tion at its heights...this is, in fact, steal­ing from the cof­fers of T&T,” she added.

She re­vealed that in two weeks there will be an­oth­er ex­er­cise in which of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries will be in­volved.

TTDF’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lt Monique Sprott as­sured that sup­port would be ren­dered.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) in­forms that it is an ac­tive part­ner with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands ref­er­ence arrange­ments for as­sis­tance based on the avail­abil­i­ty of TTDF re­sources,” Sprott said.