As rel­a­tives gath­ered in grief and si­lence, Shawn Black­burn stood on the road­side car­ry­ing a bur­den no par­ent should ever have to bear—the loss of a child.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­PA) is set to meet with Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, on Mon­day to dis­cuss a range of is­sues af­fect­ing the quar­ry­ing and ag­gre­gate sec­tor.
In a news re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, TTA­PA said it wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­struc­tive en­gage­ment and open di­a­logue with the Min­istry on sev­er­al crit­i­cal mat­ters im­pact­ing op­er­a­tors across the in­dus­try.
The dis­cus­sions are ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on li­cens­ing process­es, reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, roy­al­ties, op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion, and the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor.
TTA­PA said it re­mains hope­ful that the meet­ing will lead to prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions, im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to­ward es­tab­lish­ing a fair, trans­par­ent, and work­able frame­work for the ac­qui­si­tion of Pro­cess­ing Li­cences for the sand and grav­el in­dus­try.
The planned talks come days af­ter the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries is­sued “hold over” let­ters to 25 op­er­a­tors in the min­er­als sec­tor, al­low­ing them to con­tin­ue min­ing and pro­cess­ing ac­tiv­i­ties while ap­pli­ca­tions for re­newed li­cences are be­ing re­viewed.
The min­istry said the let­ters were is­sued on May 22 to bona fide op­er­a­tors with ac­tive op­er­a­tions whose min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences had ex­pired and were be­ing re­newed.
Un­der the arrange­ment, op­er­a­tors will be per­mit­ted to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing un­der the same terms and con­di­tions as their pre­vi­ous li­cences for one year.
The min­istry said the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to en­sure an ad­e­quate sup­ply of min­er­als at af­ford­able prices to sup­port the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.
It al­so point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Blue­print pro­gramme, in­tro­duced in No­vem­ber 2025, which in­cludes 129 ma­jor con­struc­tion projects across T&T.
The min­istry main­tained that main­tain­ing a sta­ble sup­ply of ag­gre­gate ma­te­ri­als is crit­i­cal to in­creas­ing con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty and keep­ing prices man­age­able for con­sumers and con­trac­tors.
TTA­PA re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to law­ful op­er­a­tions, re­spon­si­ble in­dus­try prac­tices, work­er safe­ty, and con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture.
The as­so­ci­a­tion said fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of Mon­day’s meet­ing.

Chris Richards Jr leads the field af­ter three days of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Golf As­so­ci­a­tion Na­tion­al Tri­als, which en­ters its fi­nal day Sat­ur­day at the Ch­aguara­mas Golf Course.

Sto­ries of mi­gra­tion, de­vo­tion, re­silience and mem­o­ry now fill the walls of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, where colour, sym­bol­ism and lived ex­pe­ri­ence con­verge in The In­do-Trin­bag­on­ian Ex­pe­ri­ence—an art ex­hi­bi­tion mark­ing In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

As this na­tion com­mem­o­rates In­di­an Ar­rival Day to­day, we do far more than cel­e­brate the ar­rival of the Fa­tel Raza­ck on May 30, 1845. We ho­n­our the courage, sac­ri­fice and re­silience of more than 147,000 In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers who jour­neyed across the Kala Pani to an un­fa­mil­iar land and, through hard­ship and per­se­ver­ance, helped to shape the na­tion we know to­day.