Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The six-month clo­sure of T&T’s scrap iron in­dus­try could re­sult in a loss of $130 mil­lion in rev­enue, as the in­dus­try is said to gen­er­ate close to $260m an­nu­al­ly.

The claim was made by T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, as he again urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­scind the six-month ban on ex­ports. He al­so said they will stage a ral­ly from the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, next Wednes­day from 9 am.

“All the per­sons who agree that we were treat­ed un­fair­ly and those af­fect­ed, please come out! I want all house­hold­ers, moth­ers, fa­thers, sis­ters and broth­ers, I am ask­ing you all to come out, this is an at­tack on poor peo­ple,” he said.

“No meet­ing could stop this ac­tion and the on­ly thing for us to stop is to open the in­dus­try. I am call­ing on Mr An­cel Ro­get and his unions to give us sup­port, TSTT and WASA work­ers, I am al­so call­ing on all civ­il so­ci­ety groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go to come and see the at­tack on poor peo­ple busi­ness, come and sup­port this to save this in­dus­try.”

Fer­gu­son said he in­tends to vis­it scrap iron work­ers in Clax­ton Bay, fol­low­ing their fiery protests over the clo­sure of the in­dus­try on Tues­day and yes­ter­day.

“We want the peo­ple in Clax­ton Bay to know that to give us some days. We can­not let al­low peo­ple to be hurt so and I tell a lot of peo­ple that Clax­ton Bay is the main area of scrap in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it comes like the head­quar­ters for scrap iron in the coun­try and that is why we have so much ac­tion on that side and there are some things tak­ing place to make us look bad,” he said.

Fer­gu­son al­so com­ment­ed on PLIPDE­CO’s an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day of a ban on the ex­port of met­als from the port.

“What they are do­ing now to make us look bad, Trinidad and To­ba­go, I want you all to re­mem­ber my as­so­ci­a­tion ask­ing the port to scan all the con­tain­ers go­ing to the port, but what they are do­ing now, be­cause there are a lot of con­tain­ers on the port be­cause the ship did not ship in time, you know what they are go­ing to do now, they are ask­ing for those con­tain­ers with scrap iron and met­als to be re­moved and checked.

Ad­vi­sor to the as­so­ci­a­tion, Ken­ny Plaza, said the in­dus­try makes over $230 mil­lion a year.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 work­ers are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed in this in­dus­try present­ly. Present­ly, 5 to 8 thou­sand who are the col­lec­tors on the street that we nor­mal­ly see and there are the in­di­rect peo­ple, which are the hauli­er, cus­tom bro­kers ... so af­fect­ed with the clo­sure for the next six months, over 15,000 per­sons,” he said.

“Two hun­dred and 60 mil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly and clo­sure of the in­dus­try for six months means that the in­dus­try will lose close to 130 mil­lion dol­lars. Does the Gov­ern­ment have a plan in place to sup­ple­ment this loss of in­come, be­cause this in­come re­al­ly, on­ly about 5 to 10 per cent re­al­ly goes in­to the hands of scrap iron deal­ers, the rest trick­les down to low­er so­ci­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, what the Gov­ern­ment has in place to sup­ple­ment this 130 mil­lion dol­lars that would not be trick­ling down in the sec­tor?”

The Gov­ern­ment has banned the ex­por­ta­tion of old and scrap iron for six months in an ef­fort to crack down on the il­le­gal har­vest­ing of met­als from pub­lic and pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties. The ban went in­to ef­fect last Fri­day and will run un­til Feb­ru­ary 23, 2023. How­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour will go back to Cab­i­net in three months with a re­view of the leg­is­la­tion to see if it can ex­pire then.

Dur­ing the ban, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try will re­view ap­pli­ca­tions for li­cens­es for ex­port, which will first be re­viewed by a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee. The Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee fea­tures Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon and the AG.