The T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion is dis­tanc­ing them­selves from re­ports of deal­ers pur­chas­ing stolen ma­te­r­i­al from Petrotrin and is call­ing on deal­ers to de­sist from any such prac­tice.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at their St He­le­na head­quar­ters, pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said, “We are ask­ing all our mem­bers, all scrap deal­ers, please stay away from all the Petrotrin ma­te­r­i­al.”

He said they had pre­vi­ous­ly held a meet­ing with Petrotrin's se­cu­ri­ty, who had in­formed them that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the is­sue were be­ing car­ried out and they were ex­pect­ing to make an ar­rest on a sus­pect who op­er­ates from the Pe­nal/Siparia area. How­ev­er, he said the clo­sure of the state-owned com­pa­ny on Fri­day and sub­se­quent dis­missal of em­ploy­ees pre­vent­ed the ar­rest from be­ing made.

How­ev­er, vice pres­i­dent Er­ros See­jat­tan said the on­ly way they can pre­vent the thefts from Petrotrin is to de­ny the ped­dlers a mar­ket for the ma­te­r­i­al. He said it was there­fore cru­cial that all stake­hold­ers, such as ped­dlers, deal­ers, van-men and res­i­dents, do their part.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, he said there were chal­lenges in iden­ti­fy­ing ma­te­r­i­al that would have orig­i­nat­ed from Petrotrin. How­ev­er, he urged deal­ers to be vig­i­lant and ques­tion the ori­gin of ma­te­r­i­al by in­sist­ing on re­ceipts be­ing pro­duced be­fore pur­chas­ing any scrap iron to en­sure these items weren't stolen. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that deal­ers go fur­ther by con­tact­ing the com­pa­ny whose name is on the re­ceipt to en­sure the ma­te­r­i­al was re­al­ly sold by them and that the sig­na­ture on the re­ceipt was not fal­si­fied.

See­jat­tan said if the is­sue is not dealt with the in­dus­try would face grave con­se­quences and ul­ti­mate­ly shut down, much like it was in 2012 when the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment shut the in­dus­try down tem­porar­i­ly.

“What we are try­ing to avoid is it (the in­dus­try) be­ing shut down com­plete­ly to have the sys­tem re­vamped,” See­jat­tan said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is there­fore al­so seek­ing the help of any gov­ern­men­tal, non-gov­ern­men­tal, or pri­vate agency in re­solv­ing the is­sue.

The as­so­ci­a­tion met with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith on Wednes­day and promised to work with po­lice to curb the is­sue, which they al­so ad­mit ex­tends fur­ther than just steal­ing from the for­mer oil com­pa­ny.