KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Mak­ing a case for the poor, pres­i­dent of the Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA), Al­lan Fer­gu­son, has plead­ed with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley not to shut down the in­dus­try, as it will put thou­sands of peo­ple on wel­fare.


At a me­dia con­fer­ence in re­sponse to Row­ley’s state­ments at a post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day that Gov­ern­ment would con­sid­er ban­ning the mar­ket­ing of scrap met­al for a pe­ri­od, Fer­gu­son said the TTSI­DA wants to work with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to find so­lu­tions. 


Fer­gu­son was con­fi­dent the par­ties could find an­swers to brazen theft and van­dal­ism of State in­fra­struc­ture by some deal­ers, as he said there were on­ly about eight scrap yards that ex­port cop­per.
 One pro­pos­al to deal with ex­port­ing stolen cop­per was to have a po­lice or Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cer present when load­ing ship­ping con­tain­ers. This would en­sure what en­ters the con­tain­ers are the par­tic­u­lars of ex­port doc­u­ments.


“I am beg­ging you, please, Mr Prime Min­is­ter, hear our cry. Hear our plea that this in­dus­try em­ploys thou­sands of poor peo­ple. Every sin­gle day peo­ple eat food out of this in­dus­try. It is the last in­dus­try that poor peo­ple have in this coun­try, and I know you care about poor peo­ple,” Fer­gu­son said.


On Thurs­day, Row­ley said some peo­ple did not care who they harmed while mak­ing a liv­ing by de­stroy­ing in­fra­struc­ture and mar­ket­ing stolen met­al ma­te­ri­als. He said as a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, he has asked Ar­mour to con­sid­er whether the Gov­ern­ment should pre­vent the mar­ket­ing of scrap met­als for a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od.


But Fer­gu­son yes­ter­day said the TTSI­DA tried to pre­vent the Gov­ern­ment from reach­ing this po­si­tion. He said the TTSI­DA was proac­tive in reach­ing out to stake­hold­ers to find so­lu­tions.

It wrote to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob on Feb­ru­ary 23, seek­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the thefts of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) ca­bles.

The TTSI­DA al­so wrote to TSTT CEO Lisa Agard on Feb­ru­ary 8, re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the thefts and make rec­om­men­da­tions.

Fer­gu­son said Ja­cob and Agard ac­ced­ed to the meet­ing. The TTSI­DA then wrote the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, ask­ing them to im­ple­ment a tem­po­rary ban on the ex­port of used cop­per. He sug­gest­ed a three-month ban.


Fer­gu­son said not all deal­ers en­gage in steal­ing TSTT ca­bles and oth­er pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture. He said as TTSI­DA pres­i­dent, he met with mem­bers around the coun­try and felt sure on­ly a hand­ful en­gaged in the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. He said he would not fight Row­ley, as he re­spects him and agrees the in­dus­try need­ed re­form.

How­ev­er, he said he can­not agree to a shut­down of the in­dus­try that helps put food on the ta­ble of thou­sands of peo­ple.

He said land­fills at Beetham, Ari­ma, Clax­ton Bay and Point Fortin were refuges for peo­ple strug­gling to make ends meet, as they scav­enge scrap met­al to sell in or­der to have a meal.


“I would nev­er agree on that be­cause in Trinidad & To­ba­go, thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple live off this in­dus­try. This in­dus­try helps the Gov­ern­ment be­cause most peo­ple, if they do not come and do some­thing in this in­dus­try, they would have to ap­ply for pub­lic as­sis­tance.”


Fer­gu­son said from 2019 to now, the scrap met­al in­dus­try had in­creased ex­port by 47 per cent. He said it fills the most con­tain­ers at ports in Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas every month. 
 “That is what I am about, to make this in­dus­try bring in for­eign ex­change. This is what we do, you know, bring in for­eign ex­change in­to Trinidad & To­ba­go, and we help with the em­ploy­ment. We help with a lot of em­ploy­ment in Trinidad & To­ba­go, so we need to stay on that course.”


Fer­gu­son said shut­ting down the in­dus­try would al­so af­fect sev­er­al ship­ping and trans­port com­pa­nies and scrap yards. He be­lieves crime would wors­en if more peo­ple fall in­to un­em­ploy­ment.