RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

The Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, has as­sured mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) that her team would col­lab­o­rate with rel­e­vant agen­cies to re­solve li­cens­ing chal­lenges, ahead of the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Scrap Met­al Act 2022.

She made this com­mit­ment dur­ing a meet­ing at the Min­istry's head of­fice in Nicholas Tow­er, Port of Spain, where TTSI­DA, led by Pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son, raised con­cerns af­fect­ing the scrap met­al in­dus­try.

Among these con­cerns were the op­er­a­tion of scrap met­al yards by for­eign na­tion­als and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the sec­tor. The As­so­ci­a­tion urged the Min­is­ter to in­ves­ti­gate these is­sues, warn­ing that fail­ure to act could lead to an in­dus­try shut­down.

TTSI­DA al­so high­light­ed dif­fi­cul­ties in meet­ing reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments, such as ob­tain­ing ap­proval from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion for Scrap Met­al Deal­ers Li­cences. In re­sponse, Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon in­struct­ed her Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to es­ca­late the mat­ter to the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning to en­sure a more ef­fi­cient process.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion drew at­ten­tion to the chal­lenges faced by scrap met­al col­lec­tors in ac­quir­ing li­cences. The Min­is­ter com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing the nec­es­sary agen­cies to stream­line this process and en­sure smoother op­er­a­tions for all stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try.

TTSI­DA ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the meet­ing’s out­comes.

"We are pleased with the lev­el of en­gage­ment and the Min­is­ter’s will­ing­ness to ad­dress our con­cerns. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion to se­cure the de­vel­op­ment of the scrap met­al in­dus­try," said Fer­gu­son.