Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand has ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to meet with the Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion on Tues­day to dis­cuss the fu­ture of their busi­ness in T&T. He re­vealed that dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Scrap iron deals had been ex­press­ing con­cern about their trade since po­lice and sol­diers searched their busi­ness­es in re­cent weeks. Ram­lo­gan said Tues­day's meet­ing would fo­cus on the es­tab­lish­ment of rules to reg­u­late the in­dus­try in T&T.

He said the meet­ing must be seen as "a gold­en win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to bring about some mea­sure of reg­u­la­tion, struc­ture and pur­pose to this lu­cra­tive in­dus­try." He said the scrap iron in­dus­try "al­so pos­es a ma­jor haz­ard and nui­sance to the com­mu­ni­ties in which they ex­ist." He said he want­ed to warn the deal­ers he ex­pect­ed them to present an­swers for spe­cif­ic ques­tions: Ram­lo­gan said he agreed with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's claim there was more to the in­dus­try than met the eye. (RL)