00:00National Quarries is facing serious challenges.
00:04Some of the challenges are quite severe and involve criminal gangs and criminal organizations
00:11infiltrating the industry, presenting major life and death situations for persons out there,
00:18especially those who have to regulate it.
00:20A number of unethical practices have also come to the fore.
00:24If you look at the business continuum, that is where the crime is happening, right?
00:30Simple as a contractor who is contracted to do quarrying is also a purchaser, right?
00:36This is one of the intelligence we have. We're investigating it. We're looking at it.
00:42That purchaser is owing the company payments, right?
00:48So how can it be? It's a conflict of interest.
00:49Operational challenges also plague NQ, which was initially mandated to supply aggregate to the public at a low economic cost.
00:58We were kind of confused with certain information that came to us.
01:06We were asking many questions, and one of them is,
01:10what is the average cost of producing aggregate at our sand and gravel quarry?
01:17And the answer, we are told, is around $397 per tonne.
01:25Our selling price of the same aggregate of sand and gravel is somewhere between $152 to $125 per tonne.
01:35A similar pricing schedule is applied to limestone.
01:39Needless to say, National Quarries is in the red.
01:42For the period 2025, 2020 to 2025, National Quarries recorded a total loss of $125,800,000.
01:56However, they are unwilling to increase prices, which are said to be close to market value.
02:02We have to be very mindful. If we raise our price any too high, we will lose the customers that
02:10we currently have because it's very competitive.
02:12The committee heard that subventions have been keeping the state-owned aggregate producer afloat.
02:18The last major subvention that the Ministry of Energy would have had oversight would have been an amount of $74
02:28.5 million
02:29to assist the company with meeting capital and operating expenditure,
02:34and that was supposed to have been dispersed in four tranches, three out of the four tranches.
02:40What year was this?
02:41Over the period 2021 to 2022.
02:45The company was subsequently transferred to the Ministry of Works,
02:49under which roughly $15 million in subventions have been dispersed.
02:53Meantime, the life of its quarries are nearing their end.
02:57Primary information indicates remaining 10%.
03:02We need to get it validated, both the limestone and quarry.
03:07The committee has agreed that further inquiries are needed to come to a decision on the future of national quarries.
03:14Vanessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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