Scan­dalous was the word To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don used to de­scribe the scrap iron in­dus­try in To­ba­go. He said un­scrupu­lous in­di­vid­u­als, en­cour­aged by deal­ers, were de­stroy­ing his­tor­i­cal ar­ti­facts, cut­ting up sug­ar mills and wind­mills, dis­tress­ing peo­ple, steal­ing grills from man­holes, all in the quest for scrap iron. Lon­don, who was speak­ing at a THA post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, said in­di­vid­u­als were al­so be­ing en­cour­aged by deal­ers, some of whom have very un­sight­ly sites of scrap iron, of­ten in res­i­den­tial ar­eas. He said he had ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous agen­cies, in­clud­ing the pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties, and would be hold­ing talks with the po­lice, the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties and any oth­er au­thor­i­ty that could as­sist the THA in con­trol­ling "this men­ace".

"I have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem with peo­ple mak­ing mon­ey but when peo­ple do so with­out any re­gard for his­to­ry, with­out any re­gard for pri­vate prop­er­ty, with­out any re­gard for the en­vi­ron­ment, with­out any re­gard for aes­thet­ics-we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­trol it," Lon­don said. He gave the as­sur­ance that the as­sem­bly would find a way to con­trol the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. The Chief Sec­re­tary ad­mit­ted that at some point peo­ple had to get rid of some kind of scrap iron since the en­vi­ron­ment de­mand­ed it, but it was some­thing that need­ed to be con­trolled in a more ef­fec­tive man­ner. "We are will­ing to utilise any le­git­i­mate and le­gal means to con­trol the process. It is not that we are against peo­ple get­ting rid of un­sight­ly ma­te­r­i­al in var­i­ous parts of To­ba­go but it has to be done in a way that re­spects the en­vi­ron­ment, re­spects the law," Lon­don added.