RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son yes­ter­day again ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to meet with his as­so­ci­a­tion to work out a deal to re­open the sec­tor.

He made the call fol­low­ing a mo­tor­cade his as­so­ci­a­tion staged from Ca­roni to Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Fer­gu­son, who did not have per­mis­sion to de­liv­er speech­es but was giv­en a bligh by the po­lice to say thank you to those who par­tic­i­pat­ed, said, “I’m ask­ing this ques­tion to the Gov­ern­ment be­cause our as­so­ci­a­tion, I, as pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, I am try­ing to meet with the Gov­ern­ment to make this in­dus­try open back.” He added, “Who was the com­pa­ny you all were do­ing the study for and try­ing to find out how much ma­te­r­i­al in Trinidad and To­ba­go it have that you all could open up and give it too?”

At that point, a woman In­spec­tor stand­ing not too far from Fer­gu­son in­struct­ed him to end his re­marks with im­me­di­ate ef­fect

The po­lice sub­se­quent­ly made it clear to the me­dia that Fer­gu­son and his mem­ber­ship were on­ly giv­en per­mis­sion for the mo­tor­cade but not for any pub­lic speech­es. The woman In­spec­tor al­so added that he was on­ly al­lowed to thank the par­tic­i­pants for their en­gage­ment and good be­hav­iour.

Ear­li­er, be­fore the mo­tor­cade left from the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Ed­wards, from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, al­so al­lowed Fer­gu­son, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice po­lit­i­cal David Ab­du­lah and an OW­TU rep­re­sen­ta­tive le­nien­cy to say a few words.

All the speak­ers ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the shut­down of the in­dus­try and called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­open it as work­ers have their fam­i­lies to take care of, in­clud­ing their chil­dren to send to school, not­ing many of those chil­dren would not be able to go to school as their par­ents have no mon­ey to buy their school­books and uni­forms.