RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Re­cent al­leged il­le­gal quar­ry­ing sites in Waller­field are cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of of­fi­cials of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands of­fice, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and po­lice of­fi­cers.

The mat­ter was brought to the at­ten­tion of State Lands of­fi­cials by res­i­dents, who claimed that the ac­tiv­i­ties, on most days, usu­al­ly com­mence late in the evening in­to the nights.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the area, a Guardian Me­dia news team saw so­lar pan­els which are be­lieved to pro­vide light­ing at night for ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tors and oth­er work­ers while they work.

There were huge mounds of dirt around al­ready dug-out acres up­on acres of land with ponds and rivers pass­ing through them.

At one par­tic­u­lar site iden­ti­fied as one of the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ar­eas, a farmer claimed the land is not be­ing quar­ried il­le­gal­ly, al­though there were two ex­ca­va­tors on the site.

“I have two ma­chines right now. I had a back­hoe here and the back­hoe wasn’t able to dig the pond at the depth that I want­ed, so I have two ex­ca­va­tors here right now to dig drains and to do two ponds for me. I do not get wa­ter for my crops and, there­fore, that is the rea­son why I need the ponds, be­cause we don’t have a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply in the area,” the res­i­dent farmer said.

Asked about the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and if she knew about it, she replied: “Re­al­ly and tru­ly, I don’t know about it. I went and I saw a big moun­tain and stuff but I don’t know what it is ex­act­ly and who is the own­er. I don’t know who are the own­ers of the land and stuff.”

The farmer then com­plained about the de­plorable roads in the area, which was at­trib­uted to the fre­quent pass­ing of heavy equip­ment, in­clud­ing ex­ca­va­tors and trucks al­leged­ly used in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I know that they do mash up the road. I’m re­al. I find the land should be used ba­si­cal­ly for agri­cul­ture, if you want, like to mind an­i­mals, what­ev­er you want to do, live­stock, what­ev­er,” the farmer said.

“We farm­ers are al­so be­ing blocked and robbed when we come back from sell­ing our pro­duce in the whole­sale mar­kets. We are be­ing tar­get­ed, maybe by these strange peo­ple who come in­to the area to do what­ev­er, the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing too.”

Sources at the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands of­fice told Guardian Me­dia that they be­came aware of the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties via air sur­veil­lance, along with re­ports from con­cerned res­i­dents of the area.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ker­win Fran­cis said the po­lice are al­so aware of what was go­ing on in that area in Waller­field, adding that there was an ac­tive po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion on­go­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that 18 peo­ple were de­tained in con­nec­tion with il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and 11 had been charged so far.

Ear­li­er this year, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was al­so raised dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with the De­fence Force.

Ef­forts to reach the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.