Suzanne Shep­pard

In the space of just 12 months, be­tween 2009 and 2010, T&T's scrap met­al ex­ports es­ca­lat­ed from $69 mil­lion to $96 mil­lion–an in­crease of 39 per cent.How­ev­er, this rapid growth was ac­com­pa­nied by an alarm­ing in­crease in thefts of met­als that sup­port the coun­try's in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ca­bles, wa­ter pumps, man­hole cov­ers and bridge rail­ing.This was one of the fac­tors that prompt­ed the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment to de­vel­op a pol­i­cy to reg­u­late the lo­cal scrap met­al in­dus­try.

The min­istry not­ed that the in­dus­try "had evolved well be­yond the frame­work of the Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act of 1904 that gov­erns the trade" in T&T.Ac­cord­ing to the pol­i­cy just made pub­lic by the min­istry, there was al­so con­cern about the lack of prop­er reg­u­la­tions to man­age the in­dus­try, lack of ad­her­ence to en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards and dam­age to the coun­try's in­fra­struc­ture.

The pol­i­cy strength­ens the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the in­dus­try, tak­ing in­to ac­count in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices as well as unique na­tion­al cir­cum­stances and pro­vides con­tem­po­rary guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions.The aim is to de­vel­op an ef­fec­tive li­cenc­ing regime for scrap met­al deal­ers and raise op­er­a­tional stan­dards for the in­dus­try.Un­der the new arrange­ment, li­cences to deal in scrap met­al will be is­sued through the min­istry's Trade Li­cence Unit (TLU) rather than in the Mag­is­trates Court as had been the pre­vi­ous arrange­ment.

There will al­so be stricter cri­te­ria for the li­cenc­ing of scrap met­al deal­ers, ex­porters and col­lec­tors. Among oth­er re­quire­ments, deal­ers must have valid VAT reg­is­tra­tion and Board of In­land Rev­enue num­bers, must be reg­is­tered un­der the Com­pa­nies Act and must have a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.On­ly es­tab­lished com­pa­nies will be el­i­gi­ble for a li­cence as in­dus­tri­al scrap met­al ex­porters and they will be sub­ject­ed to ro­bust cus­toms and po­lice in­spec­tions.

The pol­i­cy fur­ther stip­u­lates: "Scrap met­al sort­ing and pack­ing sites be prop­er­ly se­cured and be lo­cat­ed away from the gen­er­al pub­lic to pre­vent air, vi­su­al, ther­mal, wa­ter and noise pol­lu­tion."There are strict reg­u­la­tions for load­ing sites for scrap met­als, in­clud­ing a re­quire­ment for 24-hour CCTV video sur­veil­lance.Breach­es of the pol­i­cy will re­sult in fines rang­ing from $500,000 to $30,000.