Since the an­nounce­ment of the clo­sure of State-owned oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin, peo­ple have been steal­ing tonnes ma­te­r­i­al from the com­pa­ny's in­stal­la­tions and pre­sent­ing them for sale at scrap yards through­out the coun­try, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers Al­lan Fer­gu­son has said.

This theft of ma­te­r­i­al from Petrotrin is a "ma­jor prob­lem" cur­rent­ly af­fect­ing the scrap iron in­dus­try, Fer­gu­son said and as such the as­so­ci­a­tion is now call­ing for a meet­ing with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith so they can prop­er­ly deal with the is­sue.

"Right now there is a ma­jor prob­lem which is Petrotrin. A lot of the ma­te­r­i­al from Petrotrin is be­ing stolen and the as­so­ci­a­tion is try­ing to get a meet­ing with Gary Grif­fith to give him that con­cern be­cause we as the as­so­ci­a­tion will get the bad name and this in­dus­try could be in se­ri­ous prob­lems if they don't put a stop to it," Fer­gu­son said.

Chairman of the Scrap Iron Dealers Association Allan Ferguson

Joel Julien

"And the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple buy­ing that ma­te­r­i­al is peo­ple who come from out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go and have scrap yards here and they are buy­ing the ma­te­r­i­al and if any­thing hap­pens they can move out and go and we as lo­cals here will be in se­ri­ous prob­lems if the in­dus­try crash­es," he said.

"We want to have a meet­ing with Gary Grif­fith with ref­er­ence to a lot of things go­ing in the in­dus­try so we can draw some light on where the steal­ing is tak­ing place," Fer­gu­son said.

This prob­lem of ma­te­r­i­al be­ing stolen from Petrotrin and be­ing bought by scrap yards with for­eign own­ers high­lights two of the ma­jor con­cerns now fac­ing the in­dus­try, Fer­gu­son said.

"We are try­ing to save our in­dus­try be­cause the last time be­cause of a bridge they tried to close down our in­dus­try," Fer­gu­son said.

In 2012 thieves stole large chunks of the 68-foot met­al bridge across the Cap-de-Ville Riv­er, Ce­dros for sale as scrap met­al.

The thieves used a blow­torch to cut away huge beams from the base of the bridge, as well as large chunks of the rail­ings.

This prompt­ed then Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er to ques­tion whether the scrap iron in­dus­try should be out­lawed.

Fer­gu­son is fear­ful that if the Petrotrin is­sue is not prop­er­ly ad­dressed the au­thor­i­ties may again use the in­dus­try as the scape­goat.

"The last gov­ern­ment want­ed to close down the in­dus­try and we had to fight and we don't want to have to be put in that po­si­tion again so we want to try and solve a prob­lem that has start­ed to oc­cur," he said.

"We know this sit­u­a­tion will cause a lot of prob­lems, we drew it to some peo­ple's at­ten­tion al­ready but noth­ing is tak­ing place, a lot of steal­ing is tak­ing place with Petrotrin ma­te­r­i­al," Fer­gu­son said.

Scrap iron yard off St Helena Bypass Road, Kelly Village.

Joel Julien

The theft of ma­te­r­i­al from Petrotrin, how­ev­er, is not an anom­aly though as oth­er lo­cal util­i­ties have over the years com­plained of their in­fra­struc­ture be­ing stolen as part of the scrap met­al trade.

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ca­bles, wa­ter pumps, man­hole cov­ers, and con­vey­or sys­tems have all been re­port­ed stolen due to the in­crease in the lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty with scrap met­als.

Lo­cal util­i­ty com­pa­nies such as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) have all been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed in this re­gard.

Apart from this sit­u­a­tion, Fer­gu­son said a lack of prop­er reg­u­la­tion in the in­dus­try has al­so al­lowed for­eign­ers to be able to set up shop here with rel­a­tive ease and ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly.

"These peo­ple who come from for­eign and open up yards, we had brought them here to buy scrap iron from us and they are now open­ing up yards," Fer­gu­son said.

"And they are caus­ing a lot of prob­lems in the in­dus­try and that is why we are ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to please as­sist us to try to deal with this be­cause you see if we don't put a halt to it this in­dus­try will crash," he said.

Michael Reyes shows a section of the scrap yard off St Helena Bypass Road, Kelly Village.

Joel Julien

Phe­nom­e­nal rise in

scrap iron busi­ness

In 2013 the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try, and In­vest­ment pre­pared a Scrap Met­al Pol­i­cy for this coun­try.

"Over the last decade, the Scrap Met­al In­dus­try has pro­vid­ed vi­able busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for a num­ber of small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The in­dus­try con­tributes to the at­tain­ment of some of the coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic ob­jec­tives as en­vi­sioned in the pol­i­cy of the Gov­ern­ment which in­cludes em­ploy­ment cre­ation and trade pro­mo­tion. De­spite these ben­e­fits, there are many is­sues that have been raised by stake­hold­ers re­lat­ing to pro­cure­ment, pric­ing, and the mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of scrap met­al that con­tin­ue to stymie the de­vel­op­ment of this in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The de­vel­op­ment of this Scrap Met­al Pol­i­cy is, there­fore, an at­tempt to in­tro­duce new reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures to gov­ern the in­dus­try. Specif­i­cal­ly, the pol­i­cy seeks to pro­vide the frame­work that will en­sure com­pli­ance with health and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments, reg­is­tra­tion and oth­er is­sues to en­sure sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of this In­dus­try," it stat­ed.

The pol­i­cy came about as re­sult of con­sul­ta­tions held with the Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion but since then noth­ing has been done, Fer­gu­son said.

Among the con­cerns the as­so­ci­a­tion raised then was the fact that the in­dus­try has evolved well be­yond the Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act of 1904 which reg­u­lates it.

"The glob­al Scrap Met­al In­dus­try has been grow­ing at a rapid rate over the past decade. Since 2001 the in­dus­try processed more than 1,451 mil­lion tonnes of re­cy­clable ma­te­r­i­al per an­num in­to raw ma­te­r­i­al feed­stock around the world, con­tribut­ing over US$65 bil­lion to glob­al GDP in the process. The growth of this in­dus­try glob­al­ly has al­so been re­flect­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly. Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), scrap met­al ex­ports es­ca­lat­ed from TT$69 mil­lion in 2009 to TT$96 mil­lion 2010, reg­is­ter­ing an in­crease of 39 per cent over a 12 month pe­ri­od," sta­tis­tics have shown.