Sascha Wil­son and

An­drea Perez-Sobers

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­PA) has thrown its sup­port be­hind the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s de­ci­sion to is­sue hold-over let­ters to quar­ry op­er­a­tors, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials in South Trinidad yes­ter­day.

The meet­ing comes weeks af­ter the min­istry grant­ed 25 hold-over let­ters to quar­ry op­er­a­tors whose li­cences had ex­pired to con­tin­ue min­ing and pro­cess­ing legal­ly for up to one year while reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues are ad­dressed.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the meet­ing, Mooni­lal re­port­ed that TTA­PA had raised con­cerns about ap­pli­ca­tions for min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences, but wel­comed the min­istry’s ef­forts to keep the sec­tor op­er­at­ing.

“They al­so had cer­tain con­cerns about their ap­pli­ca­tions for li­cences for min­ing and pro­cess­ing. But the good news is that they stand firm­ly in sup­port of the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s ap­proach by grant­i­ng these holdover let­ters,” he stat­ed.

Mooni­lal not­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion was ea­ger to work with the min­istry to help new ap­pli­cants over­come bot­tle­necks pre­vent­ing the is­suance of li­cences.

“Li­cens­ing for ag­gre­gates is a very im­por­tant mat­ter. The re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion pro­gramme means we will have huge de­mand for grav­el, sand, ma­te­ri­als, and oth­er in­put sup­plies. We want this sec­tor to be up and run­ning quick­ly,” he re­marked.

He in­di­cat­ed that a re­li­able sup­ply of ag­gre­gates would be crit­i­cal to sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s planned con­struc­tion pro­gramme while cre­at­ing ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We can raise valu­able for­eign ex­change by ex­port­ing ag­gre­gate to the Caribbean is­lands, to Guyana, and else­where where the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty here can earn for­eign ex­change and as­sist T&T on that front as well,” Mooni­lal not­ed.

The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced plans for a ma­jor stake­hold­er en­gage­ment ex­er­cise at the end of June in­volv­ing agen­cies, in­clud­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“We are hav­ing an open house at the end of the month to bring all the play­ers, all stake­hold­ers to­geth­er to look at how we can fast-track de­ci­sions in that sec­tor,” he stat­ed.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the meet­ing, TTA­PA de­scribed dis­cus­sions as “high­ly pro­duc­tive and con­struc­tive” and praised the min­istry’s will­ing­ness to en­gage di­rect­ly with in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

The as­so­ci­a­tion main­tained that the talks rep­re­sent­ed the most sig­nif­i­cant progress it had seen in ad­dress­ing long stand­ing in­dus­try con­cerns and cre­at­ing prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions.
TTA­PA iden­ti­fied sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty ar­eas dis­cussed, in­clud­ing stream­lin­ing li­cens­ing ap­provals, im­prov­ing guid­ance for op­er­a­tors seek­ing com­pli­ance, strength­en­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and safe­ty stan­dards, and en­sur­ing a sus­tain­able ag­gre­gate sup­ply for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment projects.

The min­istry al­so re­quest­ed a com­pre­hen­sive list of TTA­PA mem­bers and the sta­tus of their li­cens­ing ap­pli­ca­tions. TTA­PA con­firmed it would gath­er and sub­mit the in­for­ma­tion to help iden­ti­fy ob­sta­cles with­in the reg­u­la­to­ry process.

The as­so­ci­a­tion stressed that it has “no ob­jec­tion to the is­suance of hold-over let­ters by the Min­istry” and in­stead “ap­plauds the Min­istry’s ef­forts to pro­vide cer­tain­ty and con­ti­nu­ity for op­er­a­tors while broad­er is­sues are be­ing ad­dressed.”

TTA­PA pledged to con­tin­ue work­ing with the min­istry to sup­port law­ful op­er­a­tions, en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, work­er safe­ty, and the de­vel­op­ment of a mod­ern and sus­tain­able quar­ry­ing in­dus­try.

On Tues­day, an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Min­ing and Pro­cess­ing of Ag­gre­gates As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T wrote to Mooni­lal, call­ing for the im­me­di­ate with­draw­al of the hold-over let­ters.