One day be­fore a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to de­lib­er­ate on the pro­posed six-month ban on scrap met­al and cop­per ex­port, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal warned that the pro­posed six-month ban is the wrong move and could push peo­ple fur­ther in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

The pro­posed ban is to al­low for the req­ui­site leg­is­la­tion and process­es to be put in place to al­low for the in­dus­try to be reg­u­lat­ed, on­ly al­low­ing li­censed deal­ers to ex­port. How­ev­er, speak­ing at a UNC press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal ex­pressed his doubt that this will ma­te­ri­alise in the fash­ion gov­ern­ment con­cep­tu­alised.

“You say you are clos­ing down for six months but we all know there will be no reg­u­la­tions, no change of law, no new regime in six months if they close down. They will close down for years,” he said.

“This is a recipe for the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. This will lead to fur­ther crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. This will lead to loss of in­come. Those busi­ness­men in this sec­tor have in­vest­ed mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars, they now stand to lose that. It is a lot of small and mi­cro-busi­ness­men in­volved here as well.”

He con­cedes the acts of van­dal­ism are an im­por­tant is­sue but con­tends there are bet­ter ways of con­trol­ling the scourge, in­stead of a blan­ket ban on the in­dus­try.

“Could I make an amus­ing com­par­i­son? We have dis­cov­ered that peo­ple are steal­ing AD Wag­on, they say that’s the num­ber one car be­ing stolen. Let’s ban the im­por­ta­tion of AD Wag­ons be­cause peo­ple thiev­ing it. You can­not think like that. You can­not ban every­thing peo­ple thiev­ing. You can­not do that, you have to po­lice the so­ci­ety, pa­trol the so­ci­ety,” he said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed tak­ing ex­am­ples from Ja­maica’s Scrap Met­al Reg­u­la­tions of 2013.

“Man Ja­maica could do it, we can do it. Sev­en wast­ed years and you couldn’t do that?” he said.

On Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­vealed that, with­in re­cent months, scrap met­al and cop­per thieves tar­get­ing state in­stal­la­tions have cost tax­pay­ers over $22 mil­lion in dam­ages. It’s why the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is now of­fer­ing a $100,000 re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of peo­ple be­hind such acts. Mak­ing the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said the in­creas­ing in­ci­dents, which dis­rupt­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty ser­vices, are now threat­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

To­day, a cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to de­lib­er­ate on the pro­posed six-month ban on scrap met­al and cop­per ex­port. The com­mit­tee is head­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and in­cludes Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds. If suc­cess­ful, it will mean deal­ers will need to be li­censed to ex­port the met­als.