Ke­jan Haynes

Even as the scrap iron in­dus­try will get a par­tial green light to re­turn to work from the Gov­ern­ment by the end of the month, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour says many con­tain­ers bound for ex­port are still be­ing found with cop­per.

“I can tell the pub­lic that a lot of cop­per has been found in those con­tain­ers. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that there was the recog­ni­tion that the cop­per was the prod­uct of lar­ce­ny of in­fra­struc­ture,” Ar­mour said yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fices an­nounc­ing the re­open­ing of the in­dus­try.

Ar­mour said po­lice will con­tin­ue in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­stances of theft de­tect­ed.

From Feb­ru­ary 24, when there will be a par­tial procla­ma­tion of the Scrap Met­al Act (No 24 of 2022), li­censed scrap iron deal­ers will be able to re­sume work af­ter a months-long ban. The act will be ful­ly pro­claimed by April 14. No new li­cens­es or vari­a­tions will be grant­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, there will con­tin­ue to be a ban on the ex­port of cop­per for a year.

“There is a com­plete ban on the ex­port of cop­per for one year from the 24th of Feb­ru­ary, whilst the Gov­ern­ment looks to see how the sys­tem can be bet­ter reg­u­lat­ed, so as not to re­turn to the wild west days of pre-April 2022 to Au­gust, when there was a pro­lif­er­a­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in which cop­per in­stal­la­tions and cop­per were be­ing stripped out of very se­ri­ous in­fra­struc­tur­al sup­port for the coun­try,” Ar­mour said.

Un­der the new leg­is­la­tion, any per­son who wish­es to ex­port scrap met­als will be re­quired to sub­mit a writ­ten no­tice to the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice sev­en days be­fore ex­port.

There are strict reg­u­la­tions to be fol­lowed be­fore the ex­port of scrap met­al. Ex­porters must have the ap­proved and signed scrap met­al ex­port trans­ac­tion ledger form, which must then be sub­mit­ted to the Trade Li­cens­ing Unit and signed off by a po­lice of­fi­cer who wit­nessed the ac­tu­al load­ing of the con­tain­er.

The law re­quires deal­ers to al­low in­spec­tion of their sites. They must con­sent to the en­try of au­tho­rised po­lice of­fi­cers on­to their premis­es. Au­tho­rised of­fi­cers are con­sid­ered po­lice con­sta­bles of the sup­ple­men­tal po­lice, en­vi­ron­men­tal of­fi­cers, pub­lic health in­spec­tors and scrap met­al in­spec­tors who are cur­rent­ly be­ing re­cruit­ed and trained.

Deal­ers will be giv­en forms by which they will sig­ni­fy in writ­ing their con­sent to al­low­ing of­fi­cials to en­ter their prop­er­ties.

Scrap iron deal­ers will al­so need to keep metic­u­lous records of who sells them met­als.

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon said the deal­er is re­quired to note the sell­er’s date of birth, gen­der, race, eye colour, hair colour, res­i­den­tial ad­dress and tele­phone num­ber, busi­ness ad­dress and tele­phone num­ber if ap­plic­a­ble.

The deal­ers must al­so make a de­scrip­tion of the scrap met­al, in­clud­ing any se­r­i­al num­bers and unique iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks, in­clud­ing num­bers or let­ters, en­grav­ings, pat­terns, weight, brand name, mod­el num­ber, colour or size.

They will be held re­spon­si­ble if any­one sell­ing to them pro­vides false in­for­ma­tion.

“If they fail to ver­i­fy the source and it turns out they (the sell­er) pro­vide false in­for­ma­tion, the scrap met­al deal­er will be the prin­ci­pal per­son,” Ar­mour said.

“If they ac­cept in­for­ma­tion from per­sons with­out tak­ing the time and the trou­ble to ver­i­fy the ac­cu­ra­cy of the in­for­ma­tion, that’s the risk they are go­ing to have to live with.”

The min­is­ters said there would be a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Any­one con­duct­ing busi­ness with­out a li­cense can face a fine, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, of $300,000 and im­pris­on­ment for three years or, on in­dict­ment, a fine of $500,000 and im­pris­on­ment of up to five years.

As a fur­ther in­cen­tive to avoid un­der­cov­er ac­tiv­i­ty, scrap iron deal­ers are now on­ly al­lowed to con­duct busi­ness be­tween 7 am and 6 pm.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said while he wel­comed and thanked the Gov­ern­ment for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­sume work in the in­dus­try, he had se­ri­ous prob­lems with some of the mea­sures, name­ly hav­ing to ver­i­fy the va­lid­i­ty of IDs giv­en to them by sell­ers.

“We are to pay for some­body who com­mit­ted fraud on us,” Fer­gu­son said.

“We are not po­lice, we are not in­ves­ti­ga­tors. How we could know that? We are not the peo­ple to do all these things. We know bout scrap! “

He al­so had an is­sue with the sev­en-day re­quire­ment to in­form the min­is­ter and the po­lice be­fore ex­port. He said he will hold a meet­ing with his mem­bers be­fore brief­ing the pub­lic fur­ther.