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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Omelia Ali - Paving the Way for Women in Mining

by

Gillian Caliste
790 days ago
20230319

Gillian Cal­iste

In her grow­ing years, Omela Ali watched her moth­er rise ear­ly to “farm the land” and raise eight chil­dren sin­gle-hand­ed­ly in cen­tral Trinidad dur­ing the 1960s. Ali al­ways re­solved that she would do “big things.” Tak­ing her cue from the hard work of her moth­er, years lat­er, Ali moved from be­ing a busi­ness­woman in the agro­chem­i­cal sec­tor to be­com­ing co-founder and CEO of Min­er­al Mines of Trinidad Ltd and the sole fe­male op­er­a­tor of a quar­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Five years in­to the field, she hopes to im­pact the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try and con­tin­ue to pave the way for women who wish to en­ter the ex­trac­tive in­dus­try or any area of busi­ness.

“When I first start­ed, get­ting in­to a man’s world was very chal­leng­ing. When I in­tro­duced my­self to peo­ple in the busi­ness, they would ask me why are you com­ing in­to this busi­ness. This is a male-dom­i­nat­ed busi­ness. We can’t see you sur­viv­ing here for more than six months. You look too soft.

“You know as women, we like to take chal­lenges. So, I took that as a step­ping stone, and I said I am go­ing to break this stereo­type: women can do min­ing. And they said we’ll see. In six months we would not see you here. But, it has been five years, and I’m still here,” Ali told WE mag­a­zine re­cent­ly.

“I told them I was go­ing to put in blood, sweat and tears in­to this and that I had the strength. I had my fam­i­ly to sup­port me.”

Since then, Ali said she has been ac­cept­ed and re­spect­ed more and more in the lo­cal min­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Of course, she is still grow­ing, she was quick to add.

Ali runs an open-pit form of a sur­face mine in San­gre Grande which ex­ca­vates the ag­gre­gate grav­el nec­es­sary for build­ing in­fra­struc­ture such as hos­pi­tals, road­works, bridges, and box drains. Oth­er sur­face mines in T&T ex­ca­vate lime­stone, sand, clay and as­phalt. In oth­er coun­tries, there are un­der­ground mines which ex­tract ma­te­ri­als like iron ore, coal or gem­stones.

A busi­ness own­er for over 30 years, Ali start­ed out in what she termed “con­ven­tion­al busi­ness” and moved in­to agro­chem­i­cals and then con­struc­tion. Yearn­ing to ful­fil a long-time dream of mak­ing a sol­id im­pact in the coun­try’s busi­ness sec­tor, she start­ed re­search­ing ag­gre­gates. She dis­cov­ered that the San­gre Grande/To­co area was where T&T’s grav­el belt runs and chal­lenged her­self.

Delv­ing in­to the ex­trac­tive in­dus­try with a “pos­i­tive mind­set,” Ali and her fam­i­ly bought land and heavy equip­ment such as ex­ca­va­tors and back­hoes, sourced staff and built the com­pa­ny from scratch. Her role is to over­see the six to eight mem­bers of staff, in­clud­ing a quar­ry man­ag­er, su­per­vi­sor, check­er, and ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tors, in ad­di­tion to labour­ers they hire as need­ed. She runs the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the quar­ry, en­sur­ing that the site is safe, that the ex­ca­va­tion sched­ule is car­ried out, and that fi­nan­cial goals are met. Hav­ing a mine de­sign plan, hav­ing the ex­ca­va­tors go down to a depth of ten to 15 feet where the grav­el bed is found and sell­ing the raw ma­te­r­i­al to pro­cess­ing plants which churn the ma­te­r­i­al in­to grav­el are some of the ac­tiv­i­ties of her work day.

She has to be phys­i­cal­ly fit for the long hours of work, has a knowl­edge of their equip­ment and be able to read­i­ly re­spond to an emer­gency. With a steady flow of pur­chase or­ders com­ing in­to her busi­ness, if there is a break­down on site, Ali has to source equip­ment parts etc in the fastest pos­si­ble time to get things run­ning again.

“Our busi­ness starts ear­ly in the morn­ing, at 5 am. We usu­al­ly have a cut-off time at 3 pm, but there are al­ways chal­lenges, and you al­ways have to con­tin­ue, and you al­ways have un­fore­seen is­sues. You al­ways have to pre­pare for the next day. Let’s say, for ex­am­ple, a cus­tomer says I want two yards to­mor­row, and you couldn’t ful­fil that 200 yards be­cause you have break­downs, then you still have to ful­fil that the next day. It’s not a smooth busi­ness like a con­ven­tion­al buy-and-sell busi­ness. The in­dus­tri­al busi­ness is a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent ball game,” Ali ex­plained.

Al­though the lo­cal mar­ket for her prod­uct is chal­leng­ing at present as the con­struc­tion sec­tor has slowed for the past eight months, she is op­ti­mistic that things will pick up soon. She be­lieves the qual­i­ty of her prod­uct which is white grav­el as op­posed to brown, and the ser­vice she pro­vides to clients have giv­en her the edge over some com­peti­tors.

Part of Ali’s role is al­so to be mind­ful of the ef­fects on the en­vi­ron­ment, she said, by re­duc­ing waste for in­stance and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the land af­ter­wards.

As the na­tion­al am­bas­sador for the Delve Ex­change Pro­gramme, an on­line pro­gramme which helps ed­u­cate and con­nect fe­male ar­ti­sanal and small-scale min­ers, al­low­ing them to ex­change knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ences, Ali helps ed­u­cate oth­ers about her jour­ney and busi­ness prac­tices. Part­ner­ing with the As­so­ci­a­tion of Women in Min­ing in Africa, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land, the World Bank, the OECD and the ACP-EU De­vel­op­ment Min­er­als Pro­gramme, un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP), the Ex­change cur­rent­ly op­er­ates in six re­gions, in­clud­ing Africa, South and Cen­tral Asia, and the Caribbean.

Point­ing out that in coun­tries like Guyana, Suri­name, Zam­bia, and Kenya women lead the min­ing in­dus­tries, Ali felt T&T women had the ca­pac­i­ty to fol­low suit, es­pe­cial­ly since or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Ex­change of­fered guid­ance and sup­port.

The moth­er of two grown chil­dren and wife of a “won­der­ful, sup­port­ive” hus­band said over her three decades in busi­ness, she al­ways felt she had a greater pur­pose.

“I want­ed to be an ex­am­ple, part of some­thing big­ger. I want to leave a lega­cy be­hind that my jour­ney here on this earth meant some­thing. Not on­ly for my chil­dren but for young women, and any women who are look­ing for a path in the ex­trac­tive sec­tor. If the path is al­ready laid, they can fol­low through and say if she did it we can do it al­so.”

Rather than re­strict her, Ali felt her “hum­ble be­gin­nings” in Cen­tral on­ly served to fu­el her de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed. Her fa­ther passed when she was nine months and her moth­er had to raise eight chil­dren alone, the el­dest of whom was 14.

“Me look­ing at her and how hard she worked, and the strength she put out to take care of her chil­dren in the ‘60s as a sin­gle woman; raise every one of us, send us to school, make sure we had food to eat, clothes, a house, every­thing, that is where I got my in­spi­ra­tion,” Ali in­sist­ed.

She re­called her moth­er as a car­ing, gen­er­ous la­dy, who was well-re­spect­ed in her com­mu­ni­ty. She saw her cul­ti­vate sug­ar­cane, corn, peas and oth­er crops like cab­bage, toma­toes, and rice. The el­der la­dy al­so worked as a labour­er with the Min­istry of Works and would come home to pre­pare a meal for the chil­dren and go back in­to the fields, Ali re­called.

When Ali was 17, he moth­er died. She had to make her own way and de­vel­op emo­tion­al­ly. In­volv­ing her­self in the busi­ness of land is her way of car­ry­ing on her moth­er’s lega­cy to her, she be­lieves.

Ali al­so feels she in­her­it­ed the hard-work­ing and car­ing na­ture of her moth­er, as she sees her­self as be­ing will­ing to help and give to oth­ers, and boasts a nice rap­port with her work­ers. She hopes to es­tab­lish “some­thing big” like a halfway house, es­pe­cial­ly for sin­gle women, and a learn­ing and ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tre for chil­dren.

The ad­ver­si­ties she has faced have thought her to have no re­grets.

“I had a tough life, but I al­so stopped to smell the ros­es along the way. Life is not a com­pe­ti­tion. Life is a jour­ney. We have to help trans­fer what we learn in­to some­thing use­ful to help the gen­er­a­tions to come,” she said. 


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