The Gov­ern­ment has kept its promise and im­ple­ment­ed a six-month ban on scrap iron and cop­per ex­port. The move comes af­ter a sharp in­crease in re­cent thefts of crit­i­cal State in­fra­struc­tures at WASA and TSTT fa­cil­i­ties, deal­ing crip­pling blows to their abil­i­ty to pro­vide ser­vice to cus­tomers.

“It is a re­gret­table step that has been tak­en but it is a step that has been recog­nised that it has been af­fect­ing the liveli­hoods of or­di­nary peo­ple,” At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said as he an­nounced the de­ci­sion at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty if Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“What we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the last, I think, four months, has been an es­ca­la­tion of an un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty, se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties in the field of what used to be and we ex­pect and hope will con­tin­ue to be, a le­git­i­mate and im­por­tant in­dus­try in this coun­try.”

Im­ple­ment­ed since last Fri­day (Au­gust 12), the or­der will be in ef­fect un­til Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023. It will now re­quire ex­porters to ap­ply for a li­cense through the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to ply their trade.

For the pe­ri­od of the ban, these ap­pli­ca­tions, the AG said, will be vet­ted and ap­proved by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee com­pris­ing him­self, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young.

The ban is to ar­rest the is­sue in the short term, while the Gov­ern­ment works out the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive frame­work to reg­u­late the in­dus­try. How­ev­er, Ar­mour said they hope the full du­ra­tion of the ban will not be need­ed.

“It is the hope that with the hard work of the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion and the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I can re­turn to Cab­i­net with­in three months to put in place a leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem which will en­able the ban to be short­er than three months be­cause we will be build­ing out a leg­isla­tive, reg­u­la­to­ry and en­force­ment process that will put an end to what is now a thriv­ing il­le­gal and il­lic­it in­dus­try, which is crip­pling this coun­try,” he said.

They will al­so up­date the fines for the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion as part of the process.

“Part of what my min­istry will be do­ing in the next three to six months is to re­view all of this leg­is­la­tion. We are look­ing at com­pa­ra­ble leg­is­la­tion not in just Trinidad and To­ba­go, this old leg­is­la­tion, but in Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica and in the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, to bring the 1904 and 1958 leg­is­la­tion which cur­rent­ly reg­u­lates this in­dus­try in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry, so as to en­sure per­sons who are then ap­pre­hend­ed un­der that leg­is­la­tion will be met with much more se­ri­ous penal­ties,” he said.

The fine for breach­ing the new mea­sures un­der the cur­rent Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act is $15,000 up­on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion.

Ar­mour said stake­hold­ers with­in the scrap iron in­dus­try will be con­sult­ed as part of the process.

“We are go­ing to be invit­ing them to make rec­om­men­da­tions to us on how they con­sid­er their in­dus­try should be reg­u­lat­ed, so as to con­tin­ue to be a law­ful, thriv­ing, re­mu­ner­a­tive in­dus­try,” he said.

On Au­gust 5 dur­ing a news con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter Hinds said a six-month ban on the ex­por­ta­tion of scrap iron was pro­posed and be­ing con­sid­ered in a bid to stop the theft of cop­per and oth­er ma­te­ri­als.

It was al­so dur­ing that news con­fer­ence that Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les spoke about the amount of mon­ey need­ed to re­pair the dam­age done to State in­fra­struc­ture af­ter vi­tal ma­te­r­i­al is stolen.

That news con­fer­ence came days af­ter thieves left TSTT cus­tomers in south Trinidad with­out tele­phone and in­ter­net ser­vices and al­so left Ma­yaro with no com­mu­ni­ca­tion, af­ter as hit on a site in San Fer­nan­do.

De­fence Force sol­diers were al­so or­dered to pa­trol State util­i­ties to pre­vent thefts and a $100,000 re­ward of­fered by the TTPS for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of those re­spon­si­ble for steal­ing cop­per and met­al from the State.