Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), Nigel Tenia, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to grant an im­me­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on sand and grav­el op­er­a­tions, as the sec­tor has been op­er­at­ing with­out for­mal li­cences for more than two decades.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Tenia said the mora­to­ri­um would pro­vide tem­po­rary le­gal pro­tec­tion for hun­dreds of op­er­a­tors while the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries works to fix what he de­scribed as a “bro­ken and ar­cha­ic” li­cens­ing process.

“We are not ask­ing for let­ters to op­er­ate,” Tenia stressed. “We are ask­ing for a mora­to­ri­um — a struc­tured, le­gal bridge so that we can fix this process to­geth­er.”

He said the re­quest comes amid grow­ing frus­tra­tion among in­dus­try stake­hold­ers who, de­spite fol­low­ing due process, have been un­able to se­cure pro­cess­ing li­cences for sand and grav­el since the year 2000.

“Our re­search con­firmed that no sand and grav­el pro­cess­ing li­cence has been is­sued in 25 years,” he said. “So tech­ni­cal­ly, every op­er­a­tion in this sub-sec­tor has been func­tion­ing in an il­le­gal con­text.”

The TTA­PA pres­i­dent said the Min­istry has in­stead is­sued let­ters al­low­ing some en­ti­ties, such as Na­tion­al Quar­ries and Stud­ley Park, to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing, but not­ed that such let­ters “cir­cum­vent the law” and are not a sub­sti­tute for prop­er li­cences.

“Why is­sue a let­ter to op­er­ate and not is­sue a li­cence?” Tenia asked. “That tells you even the Min­istry knows the process is fail­ing.”

Tenia said TTA­PA’s re­cent de­ci­sion to halt cer­tain op­er­a­tions was dri­ven by con­cern for work­ers’ safe­ty, af­ter a re­cent po­lice raid led to the ar­rest of a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor and 17 em­ploy­ees.

“This is not about de­fi­ance,” he said. “It’s about ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­tec­tion. We can­not con­tin­ue to ex­pose own­ers and em­ploy­ees to le­gal jeop­ardy while the State fails to act.”

He re­it­er­at­ed TTA­PA’s will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the min­istry, state en­ter­pris­es, and pri­vate op­er­a­tors, to re­build the sec­tor on a le­gal and trans­par­ent foun­da­tion.