The rev­e­la­tions in the Sun­day Guardian about the ac­tions tak­en by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to mit­i­gate the scourge of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing are cause for both hope and de­spair.

The hope is due to re­port­ing by the Sun­day Guardian that 57 firms and in­di­vid­u­als in this coun­try have been fined for op­er­at­ing il­le­gal quar­ries and 44 quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions have ei­ther been closed or are due to be closed.

The good news, there­fore, is that the Gov­ern­ment is wak­ing up to the dan­gers that re­sult from il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions and seems to be tak­ing ac­tion to stop them.

The de­spair orig­i­nates from the fact that three of T&T’s largest con­trac­tors who were list­ed in the doc­u­ments–which were ob­tained by this me­dia house via a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest on the Min­istry of En­er­gy–de­nied they were fined. Clear­ly, there is need for the Min­istry to clar­i­fy whether these con­trac­tors were, in fact, fined, when they were fined and how much they were re­quired to pay.

There is de­spair, as well, be­cause it is clear the Gov­ern­ment has on­ly scratched the sur­face in ad­dress­ing the dan­gers of this dirty trade.

The dan­gers of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in­clude the fact that some of these op­er­a­tions, ac­cord­ing to pre­vi­ous Sun­day Guardian re­ports, are be­ing con­duct­ed by gang­sters, who view the ex­trac­tion of T&T’s min­er­al re­sources as an easy means of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue.

If gang­sters are gen­er­at­ing mon­ey from il­le­gal quar­ries, it is ob­vi­ous some of the pro­ceeds to those crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es are used to ac­quire firearms that are con­tribut­ing to the up­surge in mur­ders T&T is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is al­so de­priv­ing T&T of mil­lions of dol­lars. It is most note­wor­thy that the 2022 State of the Ex­trac­tive Sec­tors Re­port by the T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­try Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (TTEITI), states that be­tween 2004 and 2019, the Gov­ern­ment should have re­ceived $222 mil­lion in roy­al­ty pay­ments from quar­ry op­er­a­tors, but on­ly re­ceived $29 mil­lion.

This means on­ly 13 per cent of the roy­al­ty pay­ments due to State, over a 15-year pe­ri­od, was col­lect­ed by the State from le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tors, ac­cord­ing to da­ta the TTEITI re­ceived from the En­er­gy Min­istry.

The amount of rev­enue fore­gone from the il­le­gal quar­ries is im­pos­si­ble to mea­sure be­cause their op­er­a­tions are not be­ing mea­sured or mon­i­tored.

The third dan­ger of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is the en­vi­ron­men­tal hav­oc it is wreak­ing on T&T. If it has proven to be dif­fi­cult to get le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tors to re­me­di­ate the land they have stripped bare of any veg­e­ta­tion, it is im­pos­si­ble to pre­vent huge swathes of land across this twin-is­land na­tion from be­ing ex­posed to the pil­lag­ing of il­le­gal op­er­a­tors.

For the rea­sons out­lined above, it is clear that il­le­gal quar­ry­ing has got to go. The Gov­ern­ment must im­me­di­ate­ly set up an il­le­gal quar­ry­ing task­force (IQT) com­pris­ing the coun­try’s best spe­cial force op­er­a­tives. This task force must be equipped with the lat­est in drone, satel­lite and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­ter­cep­tion tech­nol­o­gy. And it must be giv­en clear in­struc­tions to hunt down and de­stroy every il­le­gal quar­ry in T&T.

At the same time, the Gov­ern­ment should dig­i­talise ap­pli­ca­tions for, and re­newals of, quar­ry­ing li­cences by adding that ser­vice to its Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow. That act, which can be done quick­ly, would dif­fer­en­ti­ate the le­git­i­mate, roy­al­ty-pay­ing busi­ness­es from the hus­tlers and gang­sters who pay nei­ther roy­al­ties nor cor­po­rate tax­es.