Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), Nigel Tenia, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to grant an im­me­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on sand and grav­el op­er­a­tions, as the sec­tor has been op­er­at­ing with­out for­mal li­cences for more than two decades.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Tenia said the mora­to­ri­um would pro­vide tem­po­rary le­gal pro­tec­tion for hun­dreds of op­er­a­tors while the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries works to fix what he de­scribed as a “bro­ken and ar­cha­ic” li­cens­ing process.

“We are not ask­ing for let­ters to op­er­ate,” Tenia stressed. “We are ask­ing for a mora­to­ri­um — a struc­tured, le­gal bridge so that we can fix this process to­geth­er.”