Withdraw hold-over letters, group tells minister

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Min­ing and Pro­cess­ing of Ag­gre­gates As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MPAATT) is call­ing on the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) to im­me­di­ate­ly with­draw hold-over let­ters is­sued to 25 quar­ry op­er­a­tors, ar­gu­ing that the arrange­ment has no le­gal ba­sis un­der the coun­try’s min­ing laws.

In a let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­ney Van­na Jankieper­sad, act­ing on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion, raised con­cerns over the Min­istry’s de­ci­sion to is­sue hold-over let­ters on May 22 to quar­ry op­er­a­tors whose min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences had ex­pired but whose re­new­al ap­pli­ca­tions re­mained un­der re­view.

The Min­istry has al­lowed the op­er­a­tors to con­tin­ue func­tion­ing un­der the same terms and con­di­tions as their pre­vi­ous li­cences for up to one year while re­new­al ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing processed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion ar­gued that nei­ther the Min­er­als Act nor the Min­er­als (Gen­er­al) Reg­u­la­tions 2015 grants the Min­is­ter or the Min­istry au­thor­i­ty to cre­ate an al­ter­na­tive mech­a­nism al­low­ing min­ing ac­tiv­i­ty to con­tin­ue in the ab­sence of a valid li­cence.

Jankieper­sad warned that the hold-over let­ters ap­pear to be op­er­at­ing as a sub­sti­tute for statu­to­ry li­cences de­spite lack­ing any ap­par­ent foun­da­tion in the gov­ern­ing leg­is­la­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion con­tend­ed that while li­cens­ing de­lays have per­sist­ed for years, ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges can­not jus­ti­fy what it de­scribed as the cre­ation of a par­al­lel li­cens­ing regime out­side of Par­lia­ment’s au­thor­i­ty.

The let­ter stat­ed that pub­lic au­thor­i­ties must op­er­ate with­in pow­ers grant­ed by statute and that ad­min­is­tra­tive con­ve­nience can­not be used to jus­ti­fy pow­ers that do not ex­ist in law.

MPAATT al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the un­cer­tain­ty cre­at­ed for quar­ry op­er­a­tors, in­vestors, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, con­trac­tors and reg­u­la­tors while ap­pli­ca­tions re­main un­re­solved. The as­so­ci­a­tion main­tained that many op­er­a­tors have in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant time and re­sources ob­tain­ing Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance, plan­ning ap­provals, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty ap­provals, leas­es and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments and are en­ti­tled to have their ap­pli­ca­tions de­ter­mined with­in a rea­son­able time­frame.

The let­ter fur­ther ques­tioned whether the is­suance of holdover let­ters to cer­tain op­er­a­tors could cre­ate is­sues of con­sis­ten­cy and equal­i­ty of treat­ment, not­ing that pub­lic con­fi­dence in the reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem de­pends on the trans­par­ent and uni­form ap­pli­ca­tion of the law.

MPAATT has ad­vised the Min­istry to with­draw all hold-over let­ters cur­rent­ly in force while in­di­cat­ing its will­ing­ness to en­gage in dis­cus­sions aimed at cre­at­ing what it de­scribed as a law­ful, trans­par­ent, and ef­fi­cient reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try.

The Min­istry, how­ev­er, has de­fend­ed the arrange­ment as a nec­es­sary mea­sure to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in the sup­ply of ag­gre­gate ma­te­ri­als used through­out the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

In an­nounc­ing the ini­tia­tive, the Min­istry stat­ed that the let­ters were is­sued to bona fide op­er­a­tors with ac­tive quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions whose li­cences had ex­pired and were in the process of be­ing re­newed.

The Min­istry said the tem­po­rary arrange­ment was de­signed to pre­vent dis­rup­tions in the sup­ply of min­er­als need­ed for in­fra­struc­ture and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment projects across the coun­try.

It al­so point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Blue­print pro­gramme, launched in No­vem­ber 2025, which in­cludes 129 ma­jor con­struc­tion projects through­out T&T.

The Min­istry main­tained that en­sur­ing a sta­ble and ad­e­quate sup­ply of ag­gre­gate ma­te­ri­als is es­sen­tial to sup­port­ing in­creased con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty and help­ing to keep prices man­age­able for con­trac­tors and con­sumers.

The dis­pute now places re­newed fo­cus on the long­stand­ing de­lays with­in the min­er­als li­cens­ing sys­tem and rais­es broad­er ques­tions about bal­anc­ing reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance with the coun­try’s grow­ing de­mand for con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als amid an am­bi­tious pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture pro­gramme.