Ke­jan Haynes

Some scrap iron deal­ers can re­turn to work as gov­ern­ment has pro­claimed parts of The Scrap Met­al Act (No 24 of 2022).

The first as­pect will take place on Feb­ru­ary 24. The law is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly pro­claimed on April 24.

Dur­ing that time there will be a 'tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od.' No new li­cens­es, or vari­a­tions, will be grant­ed.

"The sec­tions which are to be pro­claimed would in­clude the li­cens­ing of scrap deal­ers, the pow­er of the Min­is­ter to grant and re­voke li­cens­es, the con­duct of busi­ness by a scrap met­al deal­er, in­clud­ing the keep­ing of records most im­por­tant and the re­ten­tion of scrap met­al, the ex­port of scrap met­al, the in­spec­tions of premis­es and per­sons, of­fens­es, and mis­cel­la­neous mat­ters such as the right of ap­peal and the tra­di­tion tran­si­tion­al pro­vi­sions," Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee Scoon said.

There will be a tran­si­tion­al pro­vi­sion grants to all deal­ers with valid scrap met­al deal­ers li­cens­es is­sued un­der the old leg­is­la­tion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31 2022. They would now be valid un­til April 14 2023.