SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) has made a call for cop­per ex­ports to be halt­ed un­til the theft of ca­bles and fit­tings oc­cur­ing across the coun­try can be stopped.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said this is the on­ly sure way to stop the thieves who have been run­ning ram­pant na­tion­wide, de­stroy­ing State and pri­vate in­fra­struc­ture for their gain.

“To­day, I am mak­ing this plea to the Min­istry of Trade and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I am say­ing to­day to hold up the ex­port of cop­per un­til we get it right,” Fer­gu­son said.

He said there were on­ly ten deal­ers au­tho­rised to ex­port cop­per and he be­lieves once the ex­ports are stopped, po­lice will be able to iden­ti­fy those deal­ers who pur­chase stolen cop­per.

Since 2018, when the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) stopped us­ing its cop­per lines across the coun­try, cop­per thieves be­gan cut­ting lines to sell the cop­per for ex­port.

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On April 9, a man was found hang­ing from over­heard lines in Bar­rack­pore. He was elec­tro­cut­ed while try­ing to steal cop­per wires.

On April 30, 23-year-old Dil­lon Shaughn was shot dead by a Cara­pichaima res­i­dent af­ter he and two oth­ers were sus­pect­ed of steal­ing cop­per lines in the area.

On Feb­ru­ary 3, 2021, 14-year-old Michael Sook­nanan was elec­tro­cut­ed when he al­leged­ly tried to steal cop­per lines from the Petrotrin re­fin­ery com­pound in Pointe-a-Pierre.

Last week, pho­tos and videos al­so emerged with Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) pipelines spew­ing wa­ter, af­ter thieves had re­port­ed­ly made off with the cop­per fit­tings on the line.

“This is un­ac­cept­able to see peo­ple cut­ting pipe and wa­ter is wast­ing, I think this tripped it off, whilst peo­ple can’t get wa­ter, peo­ple cut­ting pipe to waste wa­ter, whilst peo­ple can’t get elec­tric­i­ty peo­ple cut­ting all kind of thing, how much peo­ple must die again be­fore we stop this,” Fer­gu­son said yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon for com­ment on the is­sue.

Gopee-Scoon said she would not con­sid­er stop­ping the ex­ports, as a re­view of the in­dus­try was cur­rent­ly un­der­way. She could not say when the re­view be­gan or when it will be com­plet­ed.

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