JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer chair­man of Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Ltd (SPEL), David Walk­er, says the To­ba­go quar­ry has the ca­pac­i­ty to meet the de­mands of both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, pro­vid­ed the right equip­ment is pro­cured.

His com­ments come af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar grant­ed the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) an ex­port li­cence for the quar­ry on Tues­day dur­ing her of­fi­cial vis­it to the is­land. She de­scribed it as one of sev­er­al “gifts” to help the THA earn its own rev­enue and re­duce its de­pen­dence on the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the ap­pli­ca­tion was made by the THA in 2022.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley crit­i­cised the move, say­ing the quar­ry was not pro­duc­ing enough to sup­ply the lo­cal mar­ket, so al­low­ing ex­port made no sense. His com­ment was sup­port­ed by for­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan on Wednes­day, and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young, SC, at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

Young crit­i­cised the grant­i­ng of the li­cence, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment may now have to spend hard to se­cure for­eign ex­change to im­port ag­gre­gate while Stud­ley Park ex­ports.

Asked if the quar­ry had the ca­pac­i­ty to sat­is­fy both mar­kets, Young said he hoped so.

“The an­swer must be yes if you get enough pro­duc­tion go­ing, but there is a huge do­mes­tic de­mand. The truth is, and the facts are, the do­mes­tic de­mand was not able to be sat­is­fied, so there­fore there was no ex­port. Can it be done? If you get enough equip­ment on, if you get enough blast­ing, if you get com­pe­tent peo­ple.”

Walk­er said the quar­ry, dur­ing his tenure, which abrupt­ly end­ed in 2023, pro­duced 15,000 tonnes of ag­gre­gate month­ly, with a ca­pac­i­ty to in­crease by up to 100,000 tonnes. He added that there was a lack of po­lit­i­cal will to en­sure this took place.

“The short­com­ing is the pro­cess­ing. So, you need a num­ber of things. You need blast­ing equip­ment.

You need drills. You need the big crush­ing equip­ment and so on. And up to the point of my de­par­ture, that is what we have been work­ing fever­ish­ly on. All I am pre­pared to say about why it didn’t work at that time is that the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, for what­ev­er rea­son, had their is­sues with the di­rec­tion in which we, as the board, were go­ing.”

Walk­er, when asked if the quar­ry had the ca­pac­i­ty to meet both the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand, like Young, said yes.

“I don’t like to use the term gold­mine be­cause we’re talk­ing about ag­gre­gate rather than gold. But, you know, the net ef­fect is the same. The ag­gre­gate is sit­ting there, wait­ing to be mined, and in or­der to gen­er­ate all of this for­eign ex­change that the coun­try is beg­ging for. It’s there!”

Guardian Me­dia called and mes­saged cur­rent SPEL chair­man Ash­worth Jack and Au­gus­tine on the mat­ter, but up to press time got no re­sponse.

Mean­while, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John ad­dressed ques­tions from Young, who asked where the coun­try would get the ag­gre­gate it needs for con­struc­tion if Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (SPEL) ex­ports an al­ready lim­it­ed sup­ply to for­eign mar­kets.

“You heard Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Far­ley say­ing, home first. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Far­ley is a very sen­si­ble man. In ad­di­tion, Na­tion­al Quar­ry falls un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. For two years, they did not have the ma­te­r­i­al to blast, if you un­der­stand what I’m say­ing. That was lit­er­al­ly pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct, mal­prac­tice, if you un­der­stand what I’m say­ing. So we are go­ing to en­sure that we max­imise be­cause this is a new era of con­struc­tion, of ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture.”