Derek Achong

The T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ter­vene in its on­go­ing dis­pute with Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um over ig­nor­ing its pro­pos­al to buy a large amount of scrap met­al be­ing sold by it.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day morn­ing, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s Pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son claimed that while the com­pa­ny and the Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, agreed to con­sid­er to its pro­pos­al, which it claims could rev­o­lu­tionise the lo­cal scrap iron in­dus­try, the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly moved ahead to sell the items by way of com­pet­i­tive ten­der. 

“I am beg­ging the Prime Min­is­ter, now is bud­get time, but please hear our cries and save an in­dus­try,” Fer­gu­son said, as he not­ed that many of their mem­bers’ fi­nances have al­ready been dec­i­mat­ed by the clo­sure of ma­jor lo­cal pur­chasers of their ma­te­r­i­al in­clud­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal.

Fer­gu­son ad­mit­ted that his or­gan­i­sa­tion was not guar­an­teed that they would be able to pur­chase the ma­te­r­i­al, which it in­tends to process and ex­port to Tai­wan, but rather that their pro­pos­al would be fair­ly con­sid­ered. “It is not about de­mand­ing. We are try­ing to as­sist T&T,” he said. Fer­gu­son said that af­ter com­plet­ing an ini­tial view­ing of the items ear­li­er this year, the as­so­ci­a­tion hired tech­ni­cal ex­perts to help draft their of­fi­cial pro­pos­al. 

He al­so claimed that the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so sought to be­gin the process of ob­tain­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar loan to pur­chase equip­ment need­ed to break down met­als in the form de­sired by for­eign com­pa­nies. 

He claimed that af­ter hear­ing news of the ten­der sale of the items, which were amal­ga­mat­ed as Petrotrin was re­struc­tured in sev­er­al com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um. They agreed to still par­tic­i­pate while con­sid­er­ing their le­gal op­tions. 

They claimed that when they ar­rived they were al­most not let in and saw many busi­ness­men and agents of for­eign com­pa­nies, who they claimed were nei­ther li­censed nor known to en­gage in the scrap iron in­dus­try. 

Fer­gu­son claimed that his mem­bers, many of whom are small busi­ness­men, do not think they would have a com­pet­i­tive chance against the com­peti­tors they saw. 

Fer­gu­son said that if lo­cal scrap iron deal­ers, who he claimed were Petrotrin’s main cus­tomers in the past, failed to se­cure the op­por­tu­ni­ty it could lead to their clo­sure and em­ploy­ment for thou­sands of cit­i­zens.