The Gov­ern­ment has a le­git­i­mate con­cern about the scrap iron in­dus­try rel­a­tive to the dis­cov­ery of il­le­gal ma­te­ri­als in Sea Lots. How­ev­er, I am urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to lift the sanc­tion against the in­dus­try as ear­ly as pos­si­ble to pre­serve the liveli­hood of those 40,000 cit­i­zens who make a liv­ing from this. The dis­cov­ery of diesel fu­el hid­den be­neath scrap met­al and the al­le­ga­tions that crim­i­nal el­e­ments are us­ing the in­dus­try to sup­port the man­u­fac­ture of guns are cer­tain­ly le­git­i­mate and un­der­stand­able rea­sons for the im­po­si­tion of more strin­gent rules and reg­u­la­tions to mon­i­tor the op­er­a­tions of the in­dus­try.

How­ev­er, one can log­i­cal­ly sur­mise that the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens that de­pend on the sur­vival of this busi­ness must be very con­cerned about their abil­i­ty to pay their bills and put food on their ta­bles. If this in­dus­try re­mains in a stalled po­si­tion for the du­ra­tion of the SoE, en­tire fam­i­lies in North and South will suf­fer loss of rev­enue and this can have a more dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect on an al­ready dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has been known to show great com­pas­sion for the strug­gling rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and I ap­peal to him to come to the res­cue of those who are en­dur­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship as a re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment's sanc­tion.

Sel­wyn Sama­roo

Ten­nessee