Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has dis­missed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s sug­ges­tion that he be­trayed To­ba­go by re­fus­ing to grant the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) an ex­port li­cence for the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry. Row­ley said the de­ci­sion was based on sup­ply con­sid­er­a­tions rather than pol­i­tics.

Mo­ments af­ter be­ing be­stowed with the li­cence by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Au­gus­tine said the ap­pli­ca­tion was made by the THA since 2022.

He then added, “One will think, as we say in To­ba­go, that if you have a broth­er in the man­go tree, you will eat, but some­times you have to just de­pend on a stranger to give the kind ges­ture that your own will not give to you.”

Dr Row­ley, a To­bag­on­ian by birth, took is­sue with that state­ment.

He told Guardian Me­dia that the en­tire process of the Prime Min­is­ter giv­ing the li­cence dur­ing a spe­cial sit­ting of the As­sem­bly was a “pap­pyshow”.

Call­ing what was said “bla­tant mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion”, Dr Row­ley said, “This is on­ly the most re­cent act of bla­tant dis­hon­esty and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion by two peo­ple, one a Prime Min­is­ter and an­oth­er a Chief Sec­re­tary who ought not to be trust­ed with the pub­lic record.”

Dr Row­ley said Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (SPEL) could not keep up with lo­cal de­mand, and there­fore it would not have made sense to al­low SPEL to ex­port its ag­gre­gate and ar­mour rock.

“They failed mis­er­ably in that as­sign­ment, but are now play­ing pol­i­tics about be­ing de­nied an ex­port li­cence, to ex­port what we need, so that we will have to find for­eign ex­change to im­port the same prod­uct. Ex­port of se­lect­ed grades of crushed rock on­ly makes sense af­ter we pro­duce at a lev­el to sat­is­fy lo­cal de­mand,” Dr Row­ley posit­ed.

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter has no in­ter­est in this type of analy­sis and sen­si­ble de­ci­sion-mak­ing. All this ex­treme pop­ulist dis­ap­point­ment is con­cerned with is adu­la­tion and pol­i­tics, al­ways at the ex­pense of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the de­mand com­ing out of Stud­ley Park was nev­er able to sat­is­fy the full quo­ta that we need­ed in Trinidad. There was al­ways a short­age. We had a short­age in Trinidad, and we had a short­age in To­ba­go. Al­though the rocks were avail­able in To­ba­go, the amount that they were pro­duc­ing was not suf­fi­cient,” Sinanan ex­plained.

“So, that is why the ex­port li­cence was not there, be­cause the de­mand was so large, so great here in Trinidad for the Stud­ley Park ma­te­r­i­al. And you have to re­mem­ber this, the Gov­ern­ment ba­si­cal­ly sub­sidised that. And if you al­low it to ex­port, and then you have to go now and im­port at a high­er price, that didn’t make any sense.”

But Trevor James, Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, is re­ject­ing that ex­pla­na­tion.

James told Guardian Me­dia that the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had stopped mak­ing re­quests from SPEL for ag­gre­gate.

“In the last two years, we’ve had no re­quest at all for the pur­chase of ma­te­r­i­al from the Min­istry of Works. I think that ex­plains to you that the de­mand from Trinidad was ze­ro or close to ze­ro, cer­tain­ly from the state agency,” James ex­plained.

“As a mat­ter of fact, if you look through Trinidad, there’s been lit­tle or no road­works re­quir­ing the use of our an­desite in Trinidad for the last two or three years. The on­ly project we’ve built in Trinidad is the Diego Mar­tin fly­over. We’ve done no road­works for two to three years, and you could check that your­self.”

Fur­ther­more, James said the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had no right to de­cide what To­ba­go can or can­not ex­port.

“They ain’t sav­ing the coun­try any forex. And there ought not to be a sit­u­a­tion where a min­istry in Trinidad is deny­ing To­ba­go the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­port ag­gre­gate in the ground in To­ba­go.”

When asked about the rea­son the PNM gov­ern­ment gave SPEL for not is­su­ing the li­cence, James said he be­lieves it was be­cause the Gov­ern­ment want­ed SPEL to pay roy­al­ties.

He said with­out a li­cence, SPEL was in a “catch-22” sit­u­a­tion.

“We couldn’t in­vest to buy new plants, new mo­bile equip­ment to in­crease pro­duc­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Be­cause the cash flow lo­cal­ly couldn’t pro­vide the quan­ti­ties that would jus­ti­fy the in­vest­ment. And so we couldn’t in­crease pro­duc­tion be­cause we couldn’t buy new equip­ment be­cause we didn’t have an ex­port li­cence. And, like I said, we had no de­mand from Trinidad in the last two to three years.”

James was un­able to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on how much ag­gre­gate SPEL pro­duces an­nu­al­ly, but he said there was enough to sat­is­fy an ex­port mar­ket.