sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young is tar­get­ing il­le­gal quar­ry­ing among his goals in the En­er­gy Min­istry and re­sources will be ded­i­cat­ed to this dri­ve.

Young con­firmed the po­si­tion yes­ter­day af­ter a video show­ing quar­ry­ing in a part of the North­ern Range near Cumaca emerged.

It de­pict­ed how the lush green moun­tain­side has be­come scarred by a huge “hole” af­ter veg­e­ta­tion was stripped bald, down to rock.

The Tu­rure Riv­er close by has al­so been pushed back as a re­sult of the quar­ry­ing.

The video sup­plied by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Gary Aboud al­so showed the riv­er be­ing choked by mud and silt which is al­so wash­ing off the moun­tain­side from the work.

It’s turned the riv­er in­to mud holes in some parts.

The road to the area is al­so be­ing de­stroyed by big ve­hi­cles en­ter­ing for quar­ry­ing.

Aboud ex­pressed con­cern that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty might on­ly charge the cul­prit a few hun­dred dol­lars.”

“The Gov­ern­ment has the au­thor­i­ty to charge a cul­prit,” Aboud ap­pealed.

The video was sent by Guardian Me­dia to Min­is­ter Young who stat­ed, “Yes, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is an area I in­tend to ded­i­cate re­sources to tack­ling.”

“Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is some­thing I be­gan look­ing in­to when I was at Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and it’s tied up with crim­i­nal el­e­ments in many in­stances. It not on­ly dam­ages our en­vi­ron­ment but al­so funds crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“I will have more to say on this in time to come when hope­ful­ly we will be able to take ac­tion against it,” he added.

Young who’s al­so min­is­ter in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice, has been meet­ing en­ti­ties and stake­hold­ers in­volved in the en­er­gy sphere af­ter he was ap­point­ed to that min­istry last week.

The ap­point­ment came af­ter the death of Min­is­ter Franklin Khan who held the port­fo­lio.

Yes­ter­day, Young al­so said he was pleased to note that the M4 and M5 Methanol plants at Pt Lisas have restart­ed.

The plants were left idle last month when the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and Pro­man—op­er­at­ed Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Ltd be­came in­volved in gas price ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Young, who had been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with both NGC Lim­it­ed (NGC) and Pro­man through­out the re­cent weeks, said he wel­comed the fact that both par­ties reached an agree­ment that led to the restart of M4 and M5.