Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says the To­co Port project re­mains on course but can­not ad­vance to con­struc­tion un­til all statu­to­ry ap­provals are grant­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

“Every­thing is as we have said be­fore. The de­signs are com­plet­ed, and we are now work­ing on the statu­to­ry re­quire­ments,” he said

Sinanan said that en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance was a cru­cial pre­req­ui­site for mov­ing for­ward.

He ex­plained, “A port is not some­thing you can just go out and build, You must se­cure EMA ap­proval, con­duct ex­ten­sive stud­ies, and en­sure all reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments are met be­fore pro­ceed­ing.”

He not­ed that the en­vi­ron­men­tal ap­proval process is lengthy, re­quir­ing as­sess­ments across mul­ti­ple cli­mat­ic con­di­tions.

“To get EMA ap­provals, stud­ies must be con­duct­ed over dif­fer­ent dry and rainy sea­sons. That is the stage we are in right now,” he said. “Un­til all statu­to­ry ap­provals are se­cured, we can­not go out for ten­der.”

He said the ap­proval process was out­side the min­istry’s con­trol, adding, “We have to sat­is­fy the EMA’s re­quire­ments, and that dic­tates the pace,” he added.

Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) chair­man Her­bert George con­firmed that work is on­go­ing.

“So far, we have com­plet­ed the con­cep­tu­al and pre­lim­i­nary de­signs and are pur­su­ing a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance from the EMA for the im­ple­men­ta­tion phase,” George stat­ed.

“We have com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) study which has un­der­gone EMA re­view. The EMA has pro­vid­ed a Re­view and As­sess­ment Re­port re­quest­ing ad­di­tion­al da­ta col­lec­tion. We are cur­rent­ly ad­dress­ing those re­quire­ments,” George ex­plained.

The To­co Port project has faced re­sis­tance from en­vi­ron­men­tal groups. On May 22, 2020, 19 civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions raised con­cerns about the EIA, chal­leng­ing its find­ings and ques­tion­ing the project’s align­ment with na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies.

The groups ar­gued that the pro­posed port con­tra­dicts the Vi­sion 2030 Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy which pri­ori­tis­es en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. They high­light­ed “crit­i­cal mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and short­com­ings” in the EIA’s as­sess­ment of bio­di­ver­si­ty and ecosys­tems along the north­east coast and the broad­er Caribbean/At­lantic ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment. —RHON­DOR DOWLAT