SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Des­per­ate to stop the Gov­ern­ment from shut­ting down their in­dus­try, the Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) is threat­en­ing to re­port deal­ers who buy stolen met­als to the po­lice.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son says it will not be dif­fi­cult to find these er­rant deal­ers, as he an­nounced a list of self-reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures the TTSI­DA will take to try to stop the thefts at a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

“Don’t be­lieve I won’t be com­ing in your yards and al­so be­fore we act, we will call you in, we will tell you to straight­en out your sit­u­a­tion and if you don’t want to straight­en out your sit­u­a­tion, we will in­form the au­thor­i­ties,” Fer­gu­son said.

“We can’t al­low you to de­stroy this or­gan­i­sa­tion, this in­dus­try, be­cause a lot of peo­ple gain out of this in­dus­try, a lot of peo­ple make a liv­ing out of this in­dus­try and we can’t al­low one or two peo­ple to de­stroy this in­dus­try,” he added.

His state­ments come af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion met with a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee on Wednes­day. The sub-com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment would move to shut down the scrap iron in­dus­try if the bla­tant theft of State in­fra­struc­ture does not stop.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds are all on the sub-com­mit­tee.

Yes­ter­day, Fer­gu­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion was mov­ing to make scrap met­al col­lec­tors eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able by as­sign­ing them spe­cial stick­ers.

He said the TTSI­DA was do­ing all it could to get the “evil” out of the in­dus­try.

For­mer as­so­ci­a­tion sec­re­tary Ken­ny Plaza re­vealed the TTSI­DA’s in­ter­im op­er­a­tional plan, which was pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion on Wednes­day.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion was cre­at­ing a list of spe­cial in­ter­est items - in­clud­ing cop­per, gates, man­hole cov­ers, com­pres­sors and pumps - to guide deal­ers in their buy­ing.

“Any time a scrap iron deal­er sees these items of in­ter­est, it will be a red flag. This will now tell the deal­er were these items ob­tained legal­ly. And there will be ex­ten­sive proof need­ed to prove that it was ob­tained legal­ly,” Plaza said.

That proof in­cludes the name, con­tact and ad­dress of the sell­er, as well as the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of the scrap iron col­lec­tor.

Plaza said deal­ers will al­so be asked to hold all items on the spe­cial in­ter­est list for sev­en days to en­sure all checks are made be­fore they pre­pare the items for ex­port.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so wants all deal­ers and col­lec­tors to reg­is­ter so they can be giv­en reg­is­tra­tion num­bers that they can use while car­ry­ing out their le­git­i­mate busi­ness deals.

Col­lec­tors will al­so have to present proof of pur­chase to sell their met­al.

“All scrap col­lec­tors must present up­on, to scrap iron deal­ers or yards as it is com­mon­ly known, a com­plete van col­lec­tors form for all met­als that fall with­in this spe­cif­ic items of in­ter­est (list). A scrap col­lec­tor form will bear the per­son­al de­tails, a de­scrip­tion of quan­ti­ty and items in­volved, the lo­ca­tion they were ob­tained from and if any, the cost to ac­quire them,” Plaza said.

He said col­lec­tors will al­so be asked to com­plete and keep forms for trans­port­ing met­al.

“Fail­ure to do so, scrap col­lec­tors could be tak­en in­to cus­tody and all goods in tran­sit seized for in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Plaza said.

He said the sub-com­mit­tee has not yet said whether the en­tire in­dus­try will be shut down.

And while Fer­gu­son ad­mit­ted these mea­sures were not law, he said the as­so­ci­a­tion was seek­ing to make the in­dus­try com­pli­ant be­fore the Gov­ern­ment has to step in.

“If you want to save the in­dus­try, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to do it,” Fer­gu­son said.

He is al­so lob­by­ing the State to in­crease the life of scrap met­al deal­ers’ li­cens­es from one year to five years.

Fer­gu­son said there will be a spe­cial meet­ing of all deal­ers and col­lec­tors to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day) and for one month, all col­lec­tors and deal­ers can con­tact the TTSI­DA to reg­is­ter and be­come com­pli­ant.