Ke­jan Haynes

There’s still no word on if Gov­ern­ment will im­ple­ment a six-month ban on scrap iron ex­ports but Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon as­sures an an­nounce­ment will be made soon.

On Au­gust 5, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was propos­ing a six-month ban on the ex­por­ta­tion of old and scrap iron, in­clud­ing cop­per, in re­sponse to wide­spread thefts of state in­fra­struc­ture across the coun­try.

How­ev­er, the pro­pos­al has been con­demned by the Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, who has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to hurt the poor peo­ple who are most­ly in­volved in the in­dus­try.

Speak­ing the mem­bers of the me­dia at the open­ing of the new Food Hall gro­cer­ant at the Pi­ar­co Plaza yes­ter­day, Gopee-Scoon said con­trary to what the as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves, the Gov­ern­ment wants to see the in­dus­try thrive.

“Cer­tain­ly, by all means, we want to see the growth of the in­dus­try, but not un­der the cir­cum­stances that we have seen in the last few months, where there’s sig­nif­i­cant theft of state as­sets and per­son­al as­sets be­long­ing to per­sons as well. So, it’s a se­ri­ous mat­ter. It has to be curbed,” Gopee-Scoon said.

Scrap iron thieves have dis­rupt­ed near­ly all the ma­jor util­i­ties in the coun­try due to their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties. Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions have been worst af­fect­ed, as TSTT ca­bles are of­ten tar­get­ed, but WASA fa­cil­i­ties have al­so been hard hit.

The scrap iron in­dus­try falls un­der the Min­istry of Trade, through the Trade Li­cens­es Unit, but Gopee-Scoon said the Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Util­i­ties will play a ma­jor role in the re­struc­tur­ing of the in­dus­try.

“I can give you the as­sur­ance that we have the in­ter­est, that as the Min­istry of Trade, see­ing the in­dus­try back on its feet there at the right time, but, of course, re­quir­ing the reg­u­la­tions et cetera, to be put in place and I’m sure the min­is­ters will be ad­dress­ing that,” she said.