Quar­ry op­er­a­tors in Ravine Sable in Cen­tral Trinidad are plan­ning protest ac­tion if they are not al­lowed to re-open. Min­ing op­er­a­tions in the area were dis­con­tin­ued fol­low­ing the col­lapse of a road­way caused by sand min­ing from an area in Todds Road that was leased to a pri­vate op­er­a­tor from the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD), a spe­cial pur­pose State agency that over­sees Ca­roni's land­hold­ings. A spokesman for the dis­grun­tled op­er­a­tors said there were four li­censed op­er­a­tors in the area who were be­ing made to pay for the mis­man­age­ment of the EM­BD. The op­er­a­tor said it was the EM­BD's fault that sand min­ing went un­con­trolled and was not mon­i­tored.

The in­di­vid­ual, who chose not to be named, said the EM­BD al­so has un­mon­i­tored sand mines in the Clax­ton Bay area. The spokesman said the le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tors have al­ways fol­lowed reg­u­la­tions. He claimed that if the mines re­main closed sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple would be out of work and the price of sand would sky­rock­et from its present re­tail price of $700 a load to $2,000. This price would al­so es­ca­late in To­ba­go since sand is shipped from Trinidad to To­ba­go for con­struc­tion pur­pos­es. The spokesman said clay­block man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies at Long­denville utilise sand and sug­gest­ed a short­age would cause the price of blocks to rise.

The spokesman ar­gued it was a case of "Pe­ter pay­ing for Paul" and called on the Gov­ern­ment to re-open the le­git­i­mate mines or al­low op­er­a­tors to mine else­where. Paras Ra­moutar, one of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said he be­lieved that le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tors should be al­lowed to con­tin­ue since many peo­ple are de­pen­dent on an in­come from min­ing. Ra­moutar said the op­er­a­tions must be mon­i­tored and not be al­lowed to get out of hand as was done dur­ing the PNM era.�