An­gered by the con­stant pil­lag­ing of State in­fra­struc­ture by scrap iron thieves, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is con­sid­er­ing a ban on the en­tire in­dus­try.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter did not mince his words about the im­pact these thefts have on the coun­try.

“There are per­sons in the so­ci­ety who are now tak­ing the po­si­tion that they do not care who they harm, but they make a liv­ing by de­stroy­ing our in­fra­struc­ture to mar­ket the ma­te­r­i­al from which the in­fra­struc­ture is made,” Row­ley said.

“Man­hole cov­er, it doesn’t mat­ter if you fall in the hole and break your neck, or kill your wife, or kill your child, they are sell­ing that, they cut­ting the ca­bles, now they cut­ting the wa­ter lines,” he added.

Sev­er­al weeks ago, thieves hit a Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) boost­er sta­tion in Thicke Vil­lage, Siparia, leav­ing some 40,000 cus­tomers with­out a pipe-borne sup­ply of wa­ter.

But that was on­ly the lat­est in a long line of in­ci­dents, as scrap iron thieves have been wreak­ing hav­oc on State in­fra­struc­ture across the coun­try.

The most preva­lent theft has been that of over­head ca­bles be­long­ing to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT.) In the past two years, two peo­ple were elec­tro­cut­ed while try­ing to steal over­head lines and a third was shot dead by a Cara­pichaima res­i­dent af­ter he and two oth­ers tried steal­ing lines in Cen­tral Trinidad.

In ear­ly June, thieves tar­get­ed WASA lines in Up­per Bournes Road, St James, cut­ting ac­tive wa­ter lines to re­move cop­per fit­tings.

Dozens of res­i­dents were af­fect­ed by that in­ci­dent, which was strong­ly con­demned by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

That in­ci­dent had come just days af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) called for a ban on cop­per ex­ports.

But yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter hint­ed he may go much fur­ther.

“As a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, I have asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to con­sid­er whether we should not from here on in, and for some sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of time, pre­vent the mar­ket­ing of used met­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Row­ley said the thieves do not care about how many peo­ple they hurt by their ac­tions.

“Cer­tain­ly, we are not pro­duc­ing those met­als in this coun­try, we im­port for a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose and when they are put to use, oth­er peo­ple are com­ing to take them out to sell them, so the first thought is that we do not trade in them to de­ny the in­cen­tives for the thieves to take them out,” Row­ley said.

When the idea of a ban was raised weeks ago, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon ini­tial­ly said this was not some­thing the Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing.

But her Cab­i­net col­league, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Gon­za­les re­cent­ly threw his sup­port be­hind the sug­ges­tion.

“I sup­port that 100 per cent be­cause the mad­ness that we have now de­scend­ed to as a coun­try, in now at­tack­ing our util­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture, be it WASA, be it TSTT, be it Petrotrin, Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, man­hole cov­ers, this non­sense has to stop, and if they are putting for­ward a pro­pos­al to out­law the ex­port of this thing I ful­ly sup­port it,” Gon­za­les said at that time.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion for their re­ac­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments. How­ev­er, TTSI­DA pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion will hold a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day to ad­dress the is­sue.