Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er is one of the lo­cal con­trac­tors sup­ply­ing con­crete for the To­ba­go ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Ex­pan­sion Project.

Warn­er, who is charged with il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, has been sub­con­tract­ed by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd.

But from where ex­act­ly is the ma­te­r­i­al be­ing sourced?

A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion point­ed to the state-owned 43.2-hectare an­desite (vol­canic rock) quar­ry for which Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (SPEL), a pri­vate com­pa­ny owned by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), ap­plied for a li­cence in March 2023.

As of Ju­ly 2024, ac­cord­ing to the Min­ing Reg­is­ter on the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI)’s web­site, there are 12 li­censed quar­ry op­er­a­tors. Stud­ley Park is not list­ed.

While Stud­ley Park has an ap­pli­ca­tion in­side, it does not have a li­cence, mean­ing that all ex­trac­tion of ma­te­r­i­al on the is­land is il­le­gal. Un­der the Min­er­als Act Chap­ter 61:03, a quar­ry must be li­censed be­fore it can legal­ly op­er­ate.

Last week, mul­ti­ple con­crete trucks with ‘Warn­er’s’ and ‘Pres-T-Con’ signs de­liv­ered con­crete to the site night and day from the Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Lim­it­ed com­pound, lo­cat­ed di­rect­ly un­der the hills of the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry.

Guardian Me­dia was told that Warn­er is the largest con­trac­tor in To­ba­go. Pres-T-Con, which was pur­chased from Massy Hold­ings in 2021 for around $30 mil­lion, is part of the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies.

On Thurs­day af­ter­noon, Guardian Me­dia ob­served mul­ti­ple con­crete ‘Tran’ trucks go­ing to and from the new air­port site and fol­lowed two trucks marked ‘Warn­er’s’ in traf­fic for 45 min­utes from the project site in Crown Point. The white trucks - TDJ 5907 and TDJ 5911 - drove in­to the Stud­ley Park com­pound of Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Lim­it­ed.

The com­pound was mon­i­tored for sev­er­al hours and many more con­crete trucks with spin­ning cylin­ders were ob­served en­ter­ing and leav­ing. A load­ing truck was al­so seen mov­ing be­tween the Warn­er and SPEL com­pounds which are less than a minute’s dri­ve apart. In­side Warn­er’s com­pound, as vis­i­ble from the street, there were moun­tain­ous mounds of ma­te­r­i­al that were be­ing han­dled on-site by em­ploy­ees us­ing pro­cess­ing equip­ment.

Up in the scarred, tow­er­ing hills of the quar­ry, mul­ti­ple back­hoes and trac­tors cut the hill­side for ma­te­r­i­al even though no en­ti­ty is per­mit­ted to ex­tract ma­te­r­i­al from the hill.

In re­sponse to queries, Warn­er told the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk yes­ter­day: “We buy ma­te­r­i­al from the Gov­ern­ment quar­ry. We take it to our op­er­a­tion, next to the quar­ry, and pro­duce con­crete which is de­liv­ered to the air­port.”

Asked whether he was aware that Stud­ley Park did not have a valid li­cence, he an­swered: “Whether it has a li­cence or not to mine or process, I do not know. All I am aware of is, we Warn­ers like oth­er pur­chasers, get ma­te­r­i­al. That has noth­ing to do with me. That’s a state-owned busi­ness, owned by THA. They are the on­ly peo­ple pro­duc­ing ag­gre­gate in To­ba­go and we buy ma­te­r­i­al from them.”

In March 2023, Warn­er ap­plied for a min­ing li­cence for Mt St George Cas­tara Road, Green­hill, To­ba­go. Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm the sta­tus of the ap­pli­ca­tion.

In May, Al­lan Warn­er’s son, Aluko Warn­er, was one of eight men charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence at a 17-hectare site at Moo­nan Road, Waller­field. One month af­ter the charges were laid, an 18-month quar­ry­ing li­cence was grant­ed for the site by the MEEI. De­spite that, in ear­ly Ju­ly, 74-year-old Warn­er was charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence at the site. He is cur­rent­ly out on $100,000 bail.

Last Au­gust, Warn­er’s com­pa­nies un­suc­cess­ful­ly sought the re­lease of heavy equip­ment and prop­er­ty seized by po­lice as part of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Jack claims pro­vi­sion­al li­cence

Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es sells con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als such as ag­gre­gate, crush­er run, rot­ten rock, and boul­ders. The ma­te­r­i­al is typ­i­cal­ly ob­tained from the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry, which is lo­cat­ed di­rect­ly be­hind the SPEL build­ing.

In May 2023, the THA’s Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries, and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of un­der­min­ing the quar­ry’s op­er­a­tions and prof­itabil­i­ty by not grant­i­ng SPEL a min­ing li­cence.

In re­sponse to James’ claims, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said that SPEL ap­plied for a min­ing li­cence in April 2023 af­ter its pre­vi­ous li­cence ex­pired with­out the com­pa­ny sat­is­fy­ing all statu­to­ry re­quire­ments. Its li­cence has not been re­newed.

“Thus far, SPEL has not com­plet­ed all of the le­gal and manda­to­ry re­quire­ments for the grant of a min­ing li­cence. With re­spect to the au­dit be­ing con­duct­ed to cal­cu­late roy­al­ties due and ow­ing, this is a le­gal re­quire­ment of the said Min­er­als Act and Reg­u­la­tions which clear­ly state that where a min­ing op­er­a­tor op­er­ates on state land, roy­al­ties are payable to the state.

“In this re­gard, SPEL as an oc­cu­pant of state land to which min­er­al rights are re­served to the state, is re­quired to pay roy­al­ties in re­spect of all min­er­als mined. Min­er­als au­dits form a vi­tal tool in the checks and bal­ances of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for de­ter­min­ing rev­enues owed to the state. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, no li­cence to mine or process should be grant­ed un­til ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of all out­stand­ing roy­al­ties owed to the state has been ex­e­cut­ed,” Young said in a me­dia re­lease at the time.

Chair­man of Stud­ley Park Ash­worth Jack said the quar­ry is li­censed to op­er­ate.

“That is not cor­rect. That in­for­ma­tion is not cor­rect, sir. Stud­ley Park has a pro­vi­sion­al li­cense that al­lows it to work. Okay. Every­body knows that. That is pub­lic knowl­edge. That in­for­ma­tion is not cor­rect. They give you a one-year per­mit,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day sought fur­ther clar­i­ty from James on whether a min­er­al li­cense per­mit­ting SPEL to ex­tract ma­te­r­i­al had been is­sued.

He said that a blast per­mit was is­sued.

Ques­tioned fur­ther on if the quar­ry was li­censed by the MEEI, he did not re­spond.

Re­la­tion­ship with PM

For the past three years, the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies Lim­it­ed has been in the spot­light. The main rea­son is that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is per­son­al friends with its chief ex­ec­u­tive, Al­lan Warn­er.

It’s be­cause of this re­la­tion­ship that Warn­er, a To­ba­go-based con­trac­tor, has had all his projects and work he’s re­ceived scru­ti­nized by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to de­ter­mine whether he has ben­e­fit­ted from Row­ley’s po­si­tion as PM.

Warn­er’s re­la­tion­ship with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was called in­to ques­tion and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probed the pur­chase of a $1.2 mil­lion town­house from In­ez In­vest­ments by Row­ley in Shir­van, To­ba­go. Warn­er is a prin­ci­pal di­rec­tor of In­ez.

Un­der the tenure of for­mer IC chair­man Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan, the IC in­ves­ti­gat­ed Dr Row­ley three times on dif­fer­ent as­pects of his ac­qui­si­tion of the To­ba­go town­house and he was cleared all three times.

In the course of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the IC de­ter­mined that Row­ley re­ceived a dis­count which amount­ed to a gift but it was not con­nect­ed di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly with the per­for­mance of the du­ties of his of­fice.

“Be­ing cleared by find­ing no ev­i­dence to sup­port al­le­ga­tions is not PNM, it is called EX­ON­ER­A­TION. Fish­ing for in­for­ma­tion to sup­port po­lit­i­cal al­le­ga­tions, find­ing no ev­i­dence then be­ing mo­ti­vat­ed to re-open THE SAME IN­VES­TI­GA­TION is mal­ice. Clos­ing the re­opened in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the face of a le­gal threat is PROOF of the lack of au­thor­i­ty in at­tempt­ing to smear me in a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion to please oth­ers,” Row­ley had said at the time.

(Put in box)

Be­tween De­cem­ber 2021 and Feb­ru­ary 2024, the cost of ce­ment went up by 30 per cent. Each 42.5-kilo­gram bag of Pre­mi­um Plus ce­ment costs $57.38; Eco Ce­ment - $52.88; and Sul­phate Re­sis­tant - $148.50.

One load (eight yards) of ½ x ½ grav­el with sharp sand costs ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3,500.

One load (eleven yards) of ¾ grav­el x ¾ grav­el with sharp sand costs ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3,424.

One load (10 yards) of ⅜, ¾, 1-½ grav­el with sharp sand cost $3,000.

One yard of sharp sand costs around $440.

(Put in box)

The ANR Air­port Ex­pan­sion Project was pro­posed to be ap­prox­i­mate­ly 67 acres in size. The new ter­mi­nal is de­signed to ac­com­mo­date up to three mil­lion pas­sen­gers per year - three times the ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty. The ex­pan­sion project in­cludes a new do­mes­tic ter­mi­nal, an up­grad­ed elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion, a mod­ern­ized air traf­fic con­trol fa­cil­i­ty, an in­stru­ment land­ing sys­tem, in­creased floor space for con­ces­sions, mod­ern se­cu­ri­ty and equip­ment, and en­hanced air­craft park­ing space.

The ex­pan­sion project

With an ini­tial cost of US$134 mil­lion (TT$918 mil­lion) and over­runs of, at least, US$17.5 mil­lion (TT$115 mil­lion) as of ear­ly De­cem­ber, the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Ex­pan­sion Project is like­ly to be­come the most ex­pen­sive sin­gle project in To­ba­go’s his­to­ry. The com­ple­tion of the project, award­ed to Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, is ex­pect­ed ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­istry of Tourism, Arts and Cul­ture da­ta, be­tween 2017 and 2019, there was an an­nu­al av­er­age of 20,115 tourist air ar­rivals in To­ba­go. To­ba­go ac­count­ed for just five per cent of the coun­try’s tourist air ar­rivals dur­ing that pe­ri­od. Be­tween the two years, there was an av­er­age of 47,245 an­nu­al cruise ar­rivals on the is­land.

Based on a Tourism Min­istry sur­vey com­plet­ed by 20,666 vis­i­tors, the av­er­age vis­i­tor spent around TT$7,366 per vis­it be­tween 2017 and 2019.

Based on those fig­ures, To­ba­go’s air ar­rival tourists have con­tributed ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$148 mil­lion to the econ­o­my. Com­par­a­tive­ly, To­ba­go’s cruise vis­i­tors would have con­tributed around TT$348 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, the air­port is worth the in­vest­ment and will take avi­a­tion and tourism in To­ba­go in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tre for Avi­a­tion Archive, Pe­ru’s US$427 mil­lion Chinchero In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which in­cludes the con­struc­tion of a pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal on 11.6 acres, as well as a 148-foot x 2.5-mile run­way, an ATC tow­er, taxi­ways, and park­ing fa­cil­i­ties, is ex­pect­ed to serve an an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of five mil­lion pas­sen­gers. The project faced a de­lay in Ju­ly af­ter en­coun­ter­ing liq­uid­i­ty is­sues.

Over the last two weeks, the ANR Robin­son ex­pan­sion project has been a source of fierce po­lit­i­cal de­bate, with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert com­ing un­der fire from the Op­po­si­tion and me­dia for chang­ing his ac­count of fig­ures as­so­ci­at­ed with cost over­runs. Af­ter ini­tial­ly say­ing over­runs were around US$2.5 mil­lion, he ad­mit­ted that the fig­ure was clos­er to US$17.5 mil­lion af­ter Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a Cab­i­net note. The Op­po­si­tion main­tains the fig­ure is like­ly high­er.

Ad­mit­ting de­lays, Min­is­ter Im­bert ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the project would be com­plet­ed by March 31.

In­side the project

Dark blue gal­va­nized sheets around eight feet tall block the site from view. The sheets sur­round the en­tire perime­ter, ex­tend­ing along a sig­nif­i­cant length of Old Store Bay Road. The site is a fortress, with nu­mer­ous warn­ings that tres­passers will be pros­e­cut­ed and chain-linked fences with barbed wire di­rect­ly be­hind the sheets.

There are two en­try points. One, ad­ja­cent to Old Store Bay Road, is where the round­about lead­ing to the pro­posed main en­trance will be. That en­trance is pri­mar­i­ly used for small ve­hi­cles and Chi­na Rail­road Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny bus­es. Be­fore shifts, bus­es car­ry Chi­nese na­tion­als dressed in yel­low con­struc­tion hel­mets and flu­o­res­cent vests.

The sec­ond en­trance, used by dump and wa­ter trucks as well as large ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing ma­te­r­i­al, is lo­cat­ed along the very end of Gaskin Bay Road. Both en­trances are guard­ed by se­cu­ri­ty guards in booths, while there are at least two cam­eras on site.

Guardian Me­dia ac­cessed the project site on Thurs­day evening. There was thick, wa­tery mud and dust every­where near the sec­ond en­trance. There, the raw ma­te­ri­als were stored as im­pos­ing sand, white, black, and grey mounds. With­out rest, two large trac­tors, with lights pierc­ing the dark­ness, moved back and forth with ma­te­r­i­al. The 15 or so work­ers ob­served on the site are mil­i­tant. There was no small talk - com­plete fo­cus on their tasks.

An ex­pan­sive, flat con­crete sur­face, pre­sumed to be the run­way, cov­ered much of the site.

There were huge white parcels and card­board box­es bound­ed with plas­tic ties and with Man­darin writ­ing de­scrip­tions across sev­er­al parts of the site. It is un­clear what is in­side them, but they seem ready to be used.

The rear of the ter­mi­nal build­ing, hid­den from view, was less ad­vanced than the front por­tion. The ex­ter­nal struc­ture of the build­ing seemed to be com­plete, but the fin­ish­ings were not.

The three main ex­it ar­eas were with­out doors and glass. In­side were four Chi­nese na­tion­als work­ing on elec­tron­ics and glass in­stal­la­tion. White with primer, the in­te­ri­or walls were un­paint­ed. There were mul­ti­ple steel scaf­fold­ings with wood­en beams for work­ers to stand on.

Sil­ver cas­es, piled on top of one an­oth­er, were sealed with dou­ble latch­es, while on the walls bun­dles of elec­tric ca­bles were tied up.

The el­e­va­tors did not seem to be func­tion­al and the wood­en pan­els didn’t cov­er the en­tire­ty of the in­te­ri­or ceil­ing.

Work­ers: It’s com­ing along

It’s mid­day on Wednes­day and a group of about ten lo­cal con­struc­tion work­ers, as they do every day, sit on the grass, eat­ing lunch dur­ing their hour break.

Jok­ing­ly, be­fore ask­ing ques­tions, they asked me if I could help them get rid of the sun. The sun, they said, is sap­ping the rem­nants of en­er­gy from their week’s labour.

They es­ti­mat­ed that there are as many as 500 con­struc­tion work­ers on-site dur­ing the day - Chi­nese na­tion­als, Venezue­lans, T&T na­tion­als, and even Ja­maicans. The lo­cal work­ers earn $2,960 every ten days. The Chi­nese, they said, earn less.

“Fin­ish by March? Yeah, with the pace they have us work­ing, yeah. But the fin­ish­ing touch­es take time. We reach that stage, so once we reach that stage, you know it is com­ing to an end.

“Right now, they want us to work Sun­day, if we can. Op­tion­al, to get it done,” the first work­er, a To­bag­on­ian in his late 20s, said.

An­oth­er young work­er dis­agreed, say­ing: “Nah. I don’t be­lieve it will fin­ish on time. One, it have re­al work to do. Two, the mere fact that we are talk­ing Eng­lish and they are talk­ing Chi­nese, that’s a whole oth­er scene.

“The ob­jec­tive that they want to do will fin­ish way be­fore March, but the en­tire build­ing com­ple­tion? Nah, there’s all down there to do,” John, whose name was changed, said.

Af­ter hav­ing his lunch, he smoked a spliff to ease the body aches. The aches, he said, have been edg­ing a lit­tle deep­er these days, clos­er to the bone.

“I worked with a Chi­nese, yes­ter­day. If I could have buss my­self in two, it would have made the work eas­i­er. I can’t do sev­en peo­ple’s work at one time. They are killing me with work. I could work, but they are killing me with work.

“They (Chi­nese) have na­tion­als work­ing too, but they more be­cause they have the in­sight of the job. They say it and we do it, but it’s how they go about lay­ing it down. If you and I are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion, we will talk with dis­cre­tion and re­spect. They are speak­ing down to us like we are dogs. I’m a man. I’m not a dog,” John com­plained, shar­ing a sto­ry about a friend and fel­low work­er who beat up two Chi­nese na­tion­als with a shov­el af­ter one of them spat on him while he was in a ditch.

De­spite their is­sues with some of the Chi­nese work­ers, they said they are de­light­ed to, at least, have a job. Be­fore the project came around, they said the job mar­ket was ‘ter­ri­ble.’

They said they ex­pect it to be ter­ri­ble, once again, when the project is com­plet­ed.