The Gov­ern­ment has wise­ly clamped down on scrap met­al ex­ports from this coun­try as a first step in bring­ing the rule of law to this busi­ness. This was a step ad­vo­cat­ed by the news­pa­per pre­vi­ous­ly in this space, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this first crit­i­cal step is one that we un­equiv­o­cal­ly sup­port. It must al­so be ac­knowl­edged that this busi­ness sprang from the grass­roots, grow­ing out of ef­forts at re­cy­cling that en­tre­pre­neurs in the Port-of-Spain City Dump and bal­loon­ing quick­ly in­to an en­ter­prise that be­gan to con­sume the north­ern side of the Beetham High­way.

It's a busi­ness that was in­spired by chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances and be­came a crit­i­cal source of in­come for a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple. There comes a time, how­ev­er, when a small busi­ness must be­gin to play by the rules of com­merce that gov­ern all busi­ness­es, and when those op­er­a­tions po­ten­tial­ly threat­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing a state of emer­gency, there will, in­evitably, be con­flicts that arise. An un­reg­u­lat­ed busi­ness op­er­at­ing on the fringes of le­gal­i­ty al­so of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties for shady op­er­a­tors not will­ing to work in the sys­tems that birthed this re­cy­cling busi­ness.

Why rum­mage through garbage for met­al when you can sim­ply steal it? At least two state en­ter­pris­es have been chal­lenged by this crim­i­nal econ­o­my. TSTT has been en­gaged for years in con­tin­u­ing cat and mouse chas­es with thieves who tar­get the com­pa­ny's valu­able cop­per wire in­fra­struc­ture and Petrotrin was re­port­ed yes­ter­day to be suf­fer­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es on their ex­ten­sive es­tates from thieves brazen­ly haul­ing away sal­vage­able met­al by the con­tain­er load. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly galling for the state re­fin­ery, be­cause it has its own sal­vage de­part­ment, the In­vest­ment Re­cov­ery Sec­tion, which pre­sum­ably op­er­ates with more red tape than the thieves op­er­at­ing in Fyz­abad, San­ta Flo­ra For­est Re­serve and Guapo, among oth­er ex­ten­sive and quite state land­hold­ings leased to Petrotrin.

Polic­ing these ex­ten­sive lands is clear­ly un­ten­able, both be­cause of the scale of the hold­ings and the ruth­less de­ter­mi­na­tion of the thieves at work in the area, some of whom are be­lieved to be armed. Petrotrin will have to be­gin think­ing of cre­at­ing a sys­tem of cen­tral stor­age ar­eas where its scrap met­al can be gath­ered for even­tu­al sale or auc­tion. Petrotrin has, at least, an ad­van­tage in hav­ing larg­er, more read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able scrap than TSTT does and as a first step, it might sim­ply be­gin by sten­cilling iden­ti­fy­ing mark­ers on the larg­er items it's re­spon­si­ble for safe­keep­ing for tax­pay­ers un­til it can be liq­ui­dat­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment should cre­ate a straight­for­ward frame­work and struc­ture for scrap met­al sales, reg­is­ter­ing the com­pa­nies and trades­men work­ing in the busi­ness and cre­at­ing sim­ple sys­tems to ac­count for the sources of the scrap they buy. An over­wrought sys­tem of bu­reau­cra­cy would crush the sim­ple busi­ness of buy­ing, sort­ing and pack­ag­ing scrap met­al for ex­port, but a sys­tem is need­ed to hold these re­cy­cling op­er­a­tions re­spon­si­ble for their pur­chas­ing de­ci­sions that can be con­sis­tent­ly in­spect­ed and ver­i­fied. Freed of the temp­ta­tions of buy­ing stolen scrap met­al, re­cy­clers might be more ag­gres­sive about gath­er­ing aban­doned ap­pli­ances and ve­hi­cles, par­tic­i­pat­ing prof­itably in clean up op­er­a­tions that gath­er these eye­sores and en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to more read­i­ly rid them­selves of the "white box" rub­bish that's al­ways a chal­lenge in house­holds.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready sent a clear mes­sage to scrap met­al re­cy­clers that their op­er­a­tions will be un­der scruti­ny when tonnes of met­al were cart­ed away at Beetham Gar­dens. The clam­p­down on ex­ports is on­ly like­ly to be lift­ed when the busi­ness of scrap met­al re­cy­cling emerges from the gray econ­o­my and an­swers to the full re­quire­ments of com­mer­cial le­git­i­ma­cy. Mov­ing from this point of stand­off to a sit­u­a­tion which will be a win for both the re­cy­clers and the Gov­ern­ment, but re­cy­clers must be ready to ap­proach the Gov­ern­ment with a sen­si­ble and sus­tain­able pro­pos­al for their op­er­a­tions which will im­prove the ac­count­abil­i­ty of scrap met­al sourc­ing. Gov­ern­ment for its part should press some of its con­sid­er­able small busi­ness sup­port re­sources to the task of mak­ing this process eas­i­er for the hon­est en­tre­pre­neurs in this sec­tor who are pro­vid­ing a valu­able ser­vice of waste dis­pos­al to the coun­try.