San­dra Chouthi

What start­ed off as a tyre shop along the Beetham High­way-op­po­site Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um-evolved in­to a lu­cra­tive scrap met­al trade. Over the years, sev­er­al more yards with­in the Beetham Es­tate got in­to the busi­ness of col­lect­ing, buy­ing and sell­ing scrap met­als. Al­most 24/7, pick-ups, trucks, back­hoes, con­tain­ers would be parked at these yards-which were spilling out on­to the road re­serve. The sit­u­a­tion reached a point where mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice com­bined their re­sources to scrape up and re­move these il­le­gal op­er­a­tions dur­ing the 2011 state of emer­gency. The Beetham Es­tate scrap met­al deal­ers are at it again. They are slow­ly edg­ing back out on the road re­serve. Trucks, pick-ups and con­tain­ers are reg­u­lar­ly seen in the area, ei­ther drop­ping off or pick­ing up.

T&T's scrap met­al trade grew from the days when peo­ple stole man­hole cov­ers to make tawas to cook buss-up-shut for big func­tions: wed­dings, par­ties, etc, to steal­ing parts of a bridge. In this case, the brazen thieves took away pieces of a bridge along the South­ern Main Road, Pt Fortin. T&T is not iso­lat­ed re­gard­ing the ex­tent to which scrap iron deal­ers would go to to get their hands on stuff. In West Vir­ginia's Boone Coun­ty, a scrap met­al task force bust­ed a group of scrap met­al thieves who stole from a church. Sev­er­al air-con­di­tion­ing units on the prop­er­ty were ripped up for scrap met­al. A Boone Coun­ty deputy pa­trolling the area caught two sus­pects in the act. Less than 24 hours be­fore that hap­pened, Boone Coun­ty deputies ar­rest­ed two more sus­pect­ed met­al thieves who were caught steal­ing met­al roof­ing from a trail­er park. Deputies caught them try­ing to sell the met­al the very next day. In Al­le­gany, New York, coun­ty sher­iff's deputies are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the theft of scrap met­als from the Al­le­gany fire­men's grounds. Pres­i­dent of the Al­le­gany En­gine Com­pa­ny, James P Wil­son, re­port­ed to po­lice that two light poles and sev­er­al sec­tions of chain link fence were stolen. The items had been stored out­side. The theft was dis­cov­ered in March.

Ja­maica could lift scrap met­al ban

Ja­maica could lift the ban on the trade of scrap met­al en­act­ed by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment in Ju­ly 2011. In­dus­try Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Hyl­ton, who an­nounced the pos­si­bil­i­ty in Feb­ru­ary, said that there was no timetable at present, but that the min­istry had al­ready en­gaged in di­a­logue with stake­hold­ers to en­sure "agree­ment about the way for­ward." "We will, there­fore, seek ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion, if that is at all pos­si­ble at this time," he said. "This is with a view to stim­u­late the al­lied ac­tiv­i­ties and jobs in weld­ing, body­work and oth­er me­chan­i­cal op­er­a­tions to con­tribute to the Ja­maica Emer­gency Em­ploy­ment Pro­gramme on a sus­tained ba­sis." In an in­ter­view in De­cem­ber, Hyl­ton said he had con­cerns about the ban and the process by which it was en­act­ed. "I be­lieve that the scrap met­al trade, prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, is a source of liv­ing for a num­ber of per­sons, and it is part of the in­ter­na­tion­al trade that is glob­al, and the way to do it is to reg­u­late it," he said at the time. In to­day's world, reg­u­la­tion is the bet­ter strat­e­gy, he said. "As a mat­ter of phi­los­o­phy, to pro­hib­it cer­tain busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties in a glob­alised world is not the smartest way to ap­proach it."

(Caribbean Jour­nal)