An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The quar­ry­ing in­dus­try in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), is stand­ing at a crit­i­cal cross­roads.

This is not mere­ly a busi­ness of grav­el and stones; it is lit­er­al­ly the foun­da­tion of the na­tion’s roads, homes and high-ris­es, a sec­tor that sup­ports tens of thou­sands of jobs and could play a piv­otal role in eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Yet, de­spite its strate­gic im­por­tance, TTA­PA warns that the in­dus­try re­mains trapped in a cy­cle of reg­u­la­to­ry de­lays, poor over­sight, and pub­lic mis­trust. At the cen­tre of the cri­sis lies a trou­bling para­dox: a le­git­i­mate sec­tor ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue is be­ing sti­fled by red tape, while il­le­gal op­er­a­tors con­tin­ue to thrive unchecked.

Build­ing the na­tion

Nigel Tenia, Pres­i­dent of TTA­PA, in an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, did not mince words when de­scrib­ing the scale and sig­nif­i­cance of the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try.

“We prob­a­bly em­ploy be­tween 5,000 and 10,000 peo­ple di­rect­ly,” Tenia ex­plained. “But the cas­cad­ing ef­fect? You’re look­ing at be­tween 50,000 and 75,000 peo­ple. Be­cause if we stop, then the cup­board guys don’t do any­thing, the block man­u­fac­tur­ers don’t do any­thing, the truck man doesn’t do any­thing. It’s a chain re­ac­tion.”

“Ag­gre­gate sand, grav­el and crushed stone are the lifeblood of con­struc­tion. It’s used in foun­da­tions, walls, roads and var­i­ous types of in­fra­struc­ture. Dur­ing dry sea­sons, de­mand surges as home­own­ers and de­vel­op­ers race to com­plete projects. “Every­body wants to add on the room, fin­ish the foun­da­tion, put up the wall,” Tenia said. “And we feed in­to all these in­dus­tries.”

Tenia, who is al­so the own­er of The In­dus­tries Pro­fes­sion­al So­lu­tion, in­di­cat­ed that the math is sim­ple but stag­ger­ing. A sin­gle op­er­a­tor mov­ing 800 cu­bic yards per day at $150 per yard gen­er­ates $120,000 dai­ly. Mul­ti­ply that across peak sea­son and the sec­tor’s an­nu­al val­ue eas­i­ly cross­es TT$1 bil­lion.

The le­gal grey zone

De­spite its eco­nom­ic heft, the quar­ry­ing sec­tor re­mains large­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed. TTA­PA di­rec­tor Dan­ny Per­sad has been wait­ing four years for a min­ing li­cence. “I don’t re­al­ly have a busi­ness as such,” Per­sad said. “I just ap­plied for a li­cence. Four years now with­out ap­proval and noth­ing.”

Per­sad points out that on­ly four com­pa­nies are legal­ly reg­is­tered with min­ing li­cences. “But over 50 peo­ple have ap­plied. If the state agen­cies do what they’re sup­posed to do, you should have no prob­lem. You’d get plen­ty more rev­enue.”

The cost to ap­ply? “Just $1,000. The cost of de­lay? Mil­lions in lost tax­es, un­reg­u­lat­ed op­er­a­tions, and a chill­ing ef­fect on le­git­i­mate in­vest­ment,” Per­sad lament­ed.

Tenia not­ed that the re­cent ar­rest of busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra has cast a long shad­ow over the in­dus­try. He said that be­fore the in­ci­dent, many pri­vate in­vestors were show­ing in­ter­est in the quar­ry­ing busi­ness, ask­ing about costs, plant op­er­a­tions and how to get in­volved. But that in­ter­est has since evap­o­rat­ed.

Now, Tenia ex­plained, po­ten­tial in­vestors are hes­i­tant to step in, fear­ing that a sin­gle mis­step in a poor­ly reg­u­lat­ed sys­tem could ex­pose them to le­gal trou­ble and pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment. The im­age of a promi­nent busi­ness­man in hand­cuffs for il­le­gal pro­cess­ing, he said, has left many wary of as­so­ci­at­ing with an in­dus­try that lacks clear over­sight and con­sis­tent reg­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Tenia, many op­er­a­tors in the in­dus­try re­main guard­ed about their op­er­a­tions, a re­flec­tion of both the crime sit­u­a­tion and fears of reg­u­la­to­ry reper­cus­sions. He said that, based on ex­pe­ri­ence, one can of­ten gauge the scale of an op­er­a­tion sim­ply by ob­serv­ing its out­put.

For most TTA­PA mem­bers, the stan­dard lev­el of pro­duc­tion typ­i­cal­ly falls be­tween 600 and 800 cu­bic yards of ma­te­r­i­al per day, though this can fluc­tu­ate de­pend­ing on de­mand and weath­er con­di­tions.

But TTA­PA is not shield­ing bad ac­tors. In fact, they’re ready to ex­pose them.

“Once we de­cide to pause our op­er­a­tion, we are will­ing to work with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to iden­ti­fy every sin­gle op­er­a­tor who’s op­er­at­ing out­side of the law,” Tenia de­clared. “Get every­body un­der the arm of the law.”

Still, he ac­knowl­edges the pain such a move would cause. “It will def­i­nite­ly be painful for us, no rev­enue com­ing in, and it may be painful for the per­son try­ing to put up an apart­ment or a com­mer­cial build­ing. But it’s a bur­den we will all car­ry as an in­dus­try and as a na­tion.”

The dai­ly grind is no joke. “Most of us get to the quar­ry by about 5 o’clock, 5:30a.m,” Tenia said. “That’s to make sure the op­er­a­tion starts up prompt­ly at 6 or 6:30. Some op­er­a­tions run till 5, 6 in the evening. No­body wants to get up that ear­ly and be wor­ried about whether the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is com­ing.”

TTA­PA be­lieves the quar­ry­ing sec­tor could ab­sorb labour from CEPEP and URP, of­fer­ing skilled em­ploy­ment and eco­nom­ic up­lift. “We sin­cere­ly be­lieve, be­cause of the skill set of the peo­ple that were in CEPEP and URP, we can ab­solve them eas­i­ly,” Tenia out­lined.

Per­sad agreed. “In terms of con­struc­tion and stuff, they look for­ward to the quar­ry sec­tor to help them. It’s a big im­pact. When you look at it, it goes all the way back to a truck dri­ver. They go in­to the quar­ries, stock­pile to buy ma­te­r­i­al. It’s a long process.”

And the po­ten­tial for rev­enue is im­mense. “Al­though the rev­enues de­rived from it are min­i­mal now, when you quan­ti­fy it, there’s plen­ty,” Per­sad said. “In terms of the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion that the gov­ern­ment has been speak­ing about, this could be one sec­tor that could help. It’s been ly­ing for years with­out a rev­enue stream.”

Al­so speak­ing about the is­sue was Kr­is­han Sean Ma­haraj, own­er of S&S Con­trac­tors Ltd, one of many op­er­a­tors caught in this reg­u­la­to­ry bot­tle­neck. He con­firms what many in the in­dus­try have long whis­pered: “We all op­er­ate at an il­le­gal ca­pac­i­ty.” But the goal, he em­pha­sizes, is not de­fi­ance of its le­git­i­ma­cy.

The in­dus­try wants to work with the gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a frame­work where op­er­a­tions are le­gal, trans­par­ent and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial. A sys­tem where state agen­cies from the Min­istry of En­er­gy to Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, WASA, and the EMA co­or­di­nate ef­fec­tive­ly, and busi­ness­men can op­er­ate with­out fear of crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion.

“We com­plied,” Ma­haraj said, “We try our best to make sure the en­vi­ron­ment is prop­er, the lo­ca­tions are prop­er, every­thing is le­gal.”

De­spite sub­mit­ting ap­pli­ca­tions and prepar­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, op­er­a­tors re­main in lim­bo.

“We’ve been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ceive the li­cence and the pro­cess­ing li­cence as well as the min­ing li­cence. That’s what we’re ask­ing for to­day,” he ex­plains. “Let us sit with them. If they have is­sues with doc­u­men­ta­tion, we may see the prob­lems more than they will. We can work to­geth­er and fi­nalise this.”

The con­se­quences of con­tin­ued in­ac­tion are se­vere.

“If the min­is­ter doesn’t re­spond, and we take a stand, it’s not just our em­ploy­ees who suf­fer. Our sup­pli­ers, our clients, our en­tire net­work shut down,” Maraj warned. “And if you look at the Min­istry of En­er­gy’s own web­site, you’ll see no one has ever re­ceived a pro­cess­ing li­cence.

Calls for en­gage­ment

TTA­PA isn’t ask­ing for hand­outs. They’re ask­ing for en­gage­ment.

“It’s on­ly this dif­fi­cult be­cause you have not en­gaged the key stake­hold­ers in the op­er­a­tors,” Tenia stressed. “It’s al­most like some­body try­ing to play foot­ball and not en­gage any foot­ballers. You want to have a World Cup with­out any foot­ballers? How is that pos­si­ble?”

He added that the quar­ry­ing sec­tor is ready to be part of the so­lu­tion. But it needs the state to stop treat­ing it like a prob­lem. The mes­sage from the ground is clear: this isn’t about a meet­ing. It’s about sur­vival. It’s about na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. And it’s about time.