Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Scrap iron deal­ers say while they are will­ing to be­come reg­is­tered, gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy is hin­der­ing the process.

This claim was made yes­ter­day when the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) host­ed an emer­gency me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day to re­spond to state­ments made by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon in a tele­vised news re­port on Tues­day.

Vice pres­i­dent of the TTSI­DA, Er­ros See­jat­tan, told the gath­er­ing at the Sig­na­ture Hall, Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, that Gopee-Scoon said the min­istry had al­ready done three ex­ten­sions and col­lec­tors had failed to reg­is­ter. 

See­jat­tan said, “Where do the col­lec­tors reg­is­ter, tell me, where do the col­lec­tors reg­is­ter? I’ll tell you some­thing—in Sep­tem­ber it was said that in Oc­to­ber they would be look­ing for every­one to reg­is­ter as col­lec­tors. We as deal­ers are sup­posed to reg­is­ter our ve­hi­cles that col­lect scrap. Me and my wife drove from Pe­nal to Barataria, and we went in the of­fice to ask for the rel­e­vant forms to start the ap­pli­ca­tion process and guess what? We were told that noth­ing had been put in place as yet call back in two weeks, and we did call back in two weeks and they said we still wait­ing and we will call you back. Lo and be­hold, we heard on the news yes­ter­day where the min­is­ter is say­ing that we need to get our­selves to­geth­er be­cause we failed to reg­is­ter. Tell us, Madam Min­is­ter, where do we reg­is­ter?”

Pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said for­eign­ers from In­dia and Chi­na were giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment by the Gov­ern­ment. He said pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, there were 125 reg­is­tered scrap yards op­er­a­tional that ex­port­ed thou­sands of dol­lars in scrap met­al. He said fol­low­ing the pan­dem­ic and the shut­down of the in­dus­try in 2022, for­eign busi­ness­men en­tered the scene and formed what he called an il­le­gal part­ner­ship with some of the lo­cal scrap deal­ers. Fer­gu­son said there were around ten yards op­er­at­ed by for­eign­ers that were not in com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions. 

He said this was the be­gin­ning of the end for lo­cals in the in­dus­try be­cause the for­eign­ers would bring in their own peo­ple and hire for­eign­ers, and the forex earned would re­main abroad and not en­ter the lo­cal fi­nan­cial sys­tem where it is much need­ed. Fer­gu­son said his as­so­ci­a­tion would con­tin­ue to demon­strate against scrap yards run by for­eign­ers.

Furg­er­son said no van col­lec­tors, on­ly deal­ers were in­vit­ed to a meet­ing with the min­istry on April 17 at the TTBS au­di­to­ri­um in Ma­coya. 

Gopee-coon did not re­spond to a text mes­sage when asked to com­ment on the TTSI­DA’s com­plaint.