Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Drones will soon be used to help de­tect il­le­gal quar­ries, as the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) award­ed a con­tract for aer­i­al sur­vey­ing yes­ter­day.

The rev­e­la­tion came dur­ing a Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) meet­ing at the Red House yes­ter­day, to ex­am­ine the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­ports on the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

Dur­ing the sit­ting, MEEI Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles said the min­istry would have de­liv­ered a let­ter of award by the end of yes­ter­day to a con­trac­tor to pro­vide the aer­i­al sur­vey.

“We went out for a ten­der to get... an aer­i­al sur­vey so we can look at the lands which are cur­rent­ly un­der li­cence and there­by by elim­i­na­tion, be able to de­ter­mine which are the lands that are il­le­gal­ly quar­ried and the let­ter of award will ac­tu­al­ly be is­sued to­day,” she said.

Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als, Mon­ty Be­har­ry, said the last aer­i­al sur­vey was done in 2014. In lieu of cur­rent sur­veys, he said the min­istry us­es freely avail­able soft­ware such as Google Earth.

“The chal­lenge with that is we don’t have con­trol over the dates the im­ages are tak­en,” said Be­har­ry.

Brad­shaw-Niles said she is al­so in dis­cus­sions with oth­er state agen­cies to use their satel­lite da­ta.

This is the lat­est in a se­ries of mea­sures, she said, the min­istry has em­ployed to help curb il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. She said the MEEI has strength­ened co­or­di­na­tion with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to help crack down on il­le­gal sites.

Be­har­ry was un­able to say how many peo­ple were ar­rest­ed to date for en­gag­ing in the il­lic­it trade. How­ev­er, the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed last week by the po­lice was that 18 peo­ple were de­tained in con­nec­tion with il­le­gal quar­ry­ing with 11 charged.

The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary said they al­so re­viewed the reg­u­la­tions for li­cens­ing quar­ries and made rec­om­men­da­tions for re­vi­sions.

De­spite these moves, mem­bers of the PAC were not im­pressed. For mem­ber and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, Char­risse Seep­er­sad, it was the time it has tak­en to be­gin the aer­i­al sur­vey.

“I don’t want to be­labour the point, but I was here in 2019 when we in­ter­viewed the Min­istry of En­er­gy and you told us the same thing. Ba­si­cal­ly you go­ing to get the drone tech­nol­o­gy etcetera and we now in 2023 and we still haven’t had this sys­tem/soft­ware/what­ev­er,” she said.

Brad­shaw-Niles said the de­lay was be­cause the min­istry placed most of its fo­cus on re­view­ing the reg­u­la­tions for quar­ries and strate­gies with en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties. She said it was fur­ther de­layed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“All of that was done over the last three years, but it is be­ing op­er­a­tionalised at this point in time and we are mov­ing for­ward with it,” she said.

How­ev­er, PAC Chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo ex­pressed con­cern over what he be­lieved was not an ag­gres­sive enough ap­proach to the is­sue.

“We are now ap­pear­ing to be tak­ing ba­by steps for­ward in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try where the State and the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go are be­ing de­nied ac­cess to sub­stan­tial amount of funds that is go­ing to fund per­sons in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. I don’t get that the min­istry is ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing the use of avail­able tech­nol­o­gy,” he said

“You may say that you’re start­ing to do this now...you’re now en­gag­ing a con­trac­tor, let­ter of award go­ing out to­day. We have been in this in­dus­try for decades. Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing did not start to­day, it’s been here for decades. The min­istry has been in charge of quar­ry­ing for decades, from time im­memo­r­i­al and still, it does not seem we have put suf­fi­cient em­pha­sis on deal­ing with this scourge of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.”

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was al­so a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern ex­pressed dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with the De­fence Force on Mon­day.