JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Min­ing and Pro­cess­ing of Ag­gre­gates As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MPATT) pres­i­dent Dan­ny Per­sad is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to step in and fix the prob­lem of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in the coun­try.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last week, Per­sad said the pur­pose of the or­gan­i­sa­tion is to aid in the fast-track­ing of li­cences to avoid quar­ry op­er­a­tors op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly. He said there are 23 op­er­a­tors sup­port­ing him.

“We want to be on part of the ad­vi­so­ry board so we could li­aise with our mem­bers and with the reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies so we could be on the same page and be more swift get­ting ap­provals done in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” Per­sad said.

MPATT is the sec­ond body formed by quar­ry op­er­a­tors re­cent­ly. The oth­er is the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), which is led by mjrdered busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra’s close friend Nigel Tenia.

The TTA­PA was formed months af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro led a team which shut down il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and min­ing at quar­ries in the San­gre Grande, Va­len­cia and Manuel Con­go ar­eas.

While Per­sad was once part of TTA­PA, he says his or­gan­i­sa­tion leads some 15 quar­ry op­er­a­tors seek­ing to re­move them­selves from the stig­ma of be­ing la­belled il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tors.

MPATT’s con­sul­tant Shyankaran Lal­la says the aim is to le­git­imise those op­er­at­ing with­out li­cences.

“We want to work with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure that every­one who is op­er­at­ing in the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try op­er­ates legal­ly, pay their roy­al­ties and pay their rev­enue to the coun­try and I think that the gov­ern­ment should wel­come this and the gov­ern­ment should put sys­tems in place to en­sure that the de­liv­ery of li­cens­ing is done in an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive man­ner,” Lal­la said.

Asked why the or­gan­i­sa­tion is now seek­ing to be­come le­gal af­ter op­er­at­ing for years with­out all the nec­es­sary ap­provals, MPATT at­tor­ney Van­na Jankieper­sad said they are try­ing be­fore be­ing placed in a po­si­tion where they are forced to op­er­ate il­le­gal­ly.

“Cer­tain is­sues were brought to the fore­front in terms of many op­er­a­tors fac­ing a lot of reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles. So, there are many op­er­a­tors as it stands who have their Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC), they have their wa­ter ab­strac­tion per­mit, they have their Town and Coun­try and be­cause of the sig­nif­i­cant un­due de­lays faced by the Min­istry of En­er­gy, they have not ob­tained their li­cences to date.”

Her point was bol­stered by Lal­la, who point­ed to the Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als at the En­er­gy Min­istry for the de­lay.

“If there’s any il­le­gal quar­ry­ing that is tak­ing place, it is be­cause of the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the un­due de­lay in work­ing with those peo­ple who have ap­plied for their li­cence and the Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als has failed to dis­charge his du­ty in an ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient man­ner as is re­quired by the Min­er­als Act of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

While Lal­la is call­ing on di­rec­tor Mon­ty Be­har­ry to ex­pe­dite his ap­provals, Jankieper­sad said MPATT has full con­fi­dence in En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to ad­dress the is­sue. Mooni­lal met with the TTA­PA last year to ad­dress their con­cerns, but is yet to meet with MPATT.

Se­nior of­fi­cials at the min­istry told Guardian Me­dia that they are yet to meet with MPATT but wrote to the as­so­ci­a­tion re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on its or­gan­i­sa­tion. The of­fi­cial added that the min­istry is will­ing to meet with any­one who is seek­ing to op­er­ate legal­ly with­in the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try but ex­plained what caused some of the de­lays.

“They (ap­pli­cants) don’t sub­mit all the doc­u­ments. They don’t sub­mit cer­tain things like sur­vey plans, deeds, all sorts of dif­fer­ent things. And each case would be dif­fer­ent. Each ap­pli­cant would be dif­fer­ent. But in gen­er­al, what we find is that when per­sons ap­ply, they don’t sub­mit a com­plete ap­pli­ca­tion,” said the of­fi­cial, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied

Lal­la said out­side of want­i­ng to op­er­ate legal­ly, MPATT wants to con­tribute to the coun­try’s earn­ing po­ten­tial.

“The quar­ry­ing in­dus­try caters for 11 per cent of the GDP in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We al­so cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly through things like the block pro­cess­ing and all these sort of things. And we think that we can make a con­tri­bu­tion to the rev­enue stream in Trinidad.”

Lal­la said the Gov­ern­ment should wel­come the idea of quar­ry op­er­a­tors want­i­ng to be­come le­git­imised.