Legislation regulating quarrying and diesel storage in the country are to be laid in the Parliament before it is prorogued on June 17, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine has said.
Ramnarine said these were among a number of initiatives he intended to undertake before his term as Energy minister expired to make way for constitutionally due elections later this year.
“We are about to sign two wholesale marketing licences, one with Unipet and one with the National Petroleum Company (NP) that would go into regulating NP and Unipet.
“We are also planning to sign, in the next couple of months, retail marketing licences for every single gas station in the country.”
He said this initiative would bring in health and safety standards in the operations of gas stations and make it uniform across the country.
“And we are about to lay in Parliament before the end of the life in Parliament, in the next three weeks, new regulations for the first time regulations to regulate the quarry sector.”
Following the arrest of several people who are before the court charged with offences related to illegal quarrying last year, Ramnarine did indicate his ministry’s intention to amend the Minerals Act with a number of provisions to allow for the effective prosecution of offences relating to illegal quarrying, powers of arrest without warrant, powers of forfeiture of illegally quarried minerals, as well as attaching liability to the directors of mining companies.
He said yesterday: “We are bringing to the Parliament, the Minerals regulations shortly and regulations for diesel storage, which is right now on our desk in the ministry.
“As you know, diesel storage has been an issue. People tend to store diesel anyhow. Some people are very responsible, but we have incidents of people storing diesel on the edge of the sea that of course has the potential for leakage into the sea or leakage into water course and so we are working on new regulations.”
Ramnarine said regulation was one of the more important roles of his ministry which also oversees policy formulation and business development by attracting investment through bid rounds.
“The ministry is about the business of regulations in a very serious way.”