Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Warn­ings over il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tions and a crit­i­cal short­fall in ag­gre­gate sup­ply are in­ten­si­fy­ing ten­sions in the min­er­als sec­tor, as quar­ry op­er­a­tors ac­cuse Gov­ern­ment of main­tain­ing the “sta­tus quo” through its lat­est round of hold-over li­cences.

A po­ten­tial short­age of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als and grow­ing frus­tra­tion among quar­ry op­er­a­tors have placed the min­er­als sec­tor un­der re­newed strain fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to is­sue 25 hold-over li­cences to bona fide op­er­a­tors.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), Nigel Tenia, warned that the coun­try is fac­ing a widen­ing gap be­tween ag­gre­gate de­mand and pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty as ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture projects move for­ward.

“There is a short­fall,” Tenia said. “Do we know what type of ag­gre­gate we would need and the quan­tum in met­ric tonnes to ex­e­cute the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan? I guar­an­tee there is a gap.”

He added: “For this re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan to be ex­e­cut­ed, we must close the gap. It can­not be done with­out clos­ing the gap and it will not be done by main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo.”

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) con­firmed that 25 bona fide op­er­a­tors were is­sued hold-over let­ters on May 22, al­low­ing them to con­tin­ue min­ing and pro­cess­ing op­er­a­tions un­der the same terms and con­di­tions as their pre­vi­ous li­cences while re­new­al ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing processed.

The min­istry said the let­ters ap­ply to op­er­a­tors with ac­tive op­er­a­tions whose min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences had ex­pired but who are cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing re­new­al. The ap­provals are valid for one year and form part of Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er T&T Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Blue­print, launched in No­vem­ber 2025, which out­lines 129 in­fra­struc­ture projects across Trinidad and To­ba­go aimed at strength­en­ing con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, em­ploy­ment cre­ation and eco­nom­ic growth.

The min­istry said the pol­i­cy is in­tend­ed to sta­bilise ag­gre­gate sup­ply and main­tain af­ford­able prices while sup­port­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals.

Tenia said sev­er­al op­er­a­tors with­in the al­liance have spent years at­tempt­ing to nav­i­gate what he de­scribed as a dif­fi­cult and in­con­sis­tent ap­proval process, on­ly to now face an­oth­er call for new ap­pli­ca­tions and open-house ses­sions from the min­istry.

He added that many op­er­a­tors were now ques­tion­ing why they were be­ing asked to con­tin­ue ap­ply­ing while oth­ers re­ceived tem­po­rary ap­provals.

TTA­PA has ques­tioned both the fair­ness and ef­fec­tive­ness of the pol­i­cy, ar­gu­ing that it large­ly ben­e­fits op­er­a­tors al­ready func­tion­ing while ex­clud­ing oth­ers who have spent years at­tempt­ing to reg­u­larise op­er­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Tenia, many of the op­er­a­tors grant­ed hold-over let­ters had con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing de­spite ex­pired li­cences.

He al­so not­ed that no op­er­a­tors in­volved in pro­cess­ing sand and grav­el ap­pear to have re­ceived hold-over ap­provals.

He warned that con­tin­ued li­cens­ing de­lays could un­in­ten­tion­al­ly fu­el il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

De­spite the crit­i­cism, Tenia praised the ef­forts of the lead­er­ship at the State-owned Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny.

TTA­PA is now prepar­ing a let­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal seek­ing fur­ther di­a­logue on re­forms with­in the sec­tor.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy said it would ac­cept new li­cence ap­pli­ca­tions next month.