The Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­PA) has raised con­cerns over the state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of En­er­gy yes­ter­day on li­cences for the min­er­al sec­tor.

While af­firm­ing its sup­port for law­ful reg­u­la­tion, en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and the prop­er col­lec­tion of roy­al­ties owed to the State, the As­so­ci­a­tion said sev­er­al se­ri­ous ques­tions re­main unan­swered re­gard­ing the trans­paren­cy, con­sis­ten­cy and fair­ness of cur­rent en­force­ment mea­sures.

TTA­PA is seek­ing clar­i­ty on key is­sues, in­clud­ing the frame­work for set­tling out­stand­ing roy­al­ty pay­ments, whether some op­er­a­tors have been of­fered ex­ten­sions or ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ments while oth­ers have not, the cri­te­ria for al­low­ing cer­tain com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions while oth­ers face en­force­ment and the lim­it­ed pub­lic dis­clo­sure of com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing with ex­pired li­cences or un­re­solved com­pli­ance is­sues.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so ques­tioned whether “holdover” let­ters or tem­po­rary op­er­a­tional per­mis­sions have been is­sued to op­er­a­tors and un­der what le­gal au­thor­i­ty.

“These are im­por­tant ques­tions not on­ly for op­er­a­tors with­in the sec­tor but for the wider pub­lic, whose con­fi­dence de­pends on trans­paren­cy, con­sis­ten­cy, and equal treat­ment un­der the law,” TTA­PA said.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that it is a le­gal re­quire­ment for every quar­ry to ob­tain a Min­ing Li­cence be­fore op­er­at­ing. The Min­er­als Act and Min­er­als (Gen­er­al) Reg­u­la­tions out­line clear oblig­a­tions re­gard­ing roy­al­ties and li­censed op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing that li­cence hold­ers must pay roy­al­ties with­in the spec­i­fied pe­ri­od and that any ex­ten­sions or fi­nan­cial arrange­ments can on­ly be grant­ed in ac­cor­dance with the law. Pub­lic records laid in Par­lia­ment have shown that nu­mer­ous quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions have func­tioned un­der ex­pired li­cences or with­out li­cences, while out­stand­ing roy­al­ties re­main.

TTA­PA said that if op­er­a­tors with ex­pired li­cences were al­lowed to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions through ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions or de­layed en­force­ment, the in­dus­try de­serves clar­i­ty on whether such prac­tices align with the in­tent and pro­vi­sions of the Min­er­als Act. The As­so­ci­a­tion warned that fail­ure to pro­vide such clar­i­ty could cre­ate a per­cep­tion of con­tra­dic­tion, un­equal treat­ment or po­ten­tial con­tra­ven­tion of the law.