RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) Al­lan Fer­gu­son said there is an ur­gent need to meet with the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Mc Don­ald Ja­cob to seek the ad­dress the is­sues plagu­ing the in­dus­try in­clud­ing the clamp­ing down of il­le­gal deal­ers who he said is threat­en­ing the in­dus­try.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day at the Sig­na­ture Hall au­di­to­ri­um in Long­denville in Ch­agua­nas, Fer­gu­son said the theft of ca­ble thiev­ing is in­creas­ing adding to which the as­so­ci­a­tion has iden­ti­fied about 60 il­le­gal deal­ers es­tab­lish­ing them­selves over the cur­rent Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

Fer­gu­son ex­plained that the in­crease in theft and oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties pos­es a se­ri­ous threat to the in­dus­try and can cause clo­sure if it con­tin­ues.

Fer­gu­son dis­closed that a let­ter was sent to Ja­cob on Feb­ru­ary 23, 2022 to dis­cuss the theft of TSTT Ca­bles.

The let­ter at­tained by the Guardian Me­dia read: "...that the in­dus­try as a whole and in par­tic­u­lar our mem­bers are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by these reg­u­lar oc­cur­rences of theft."
"In this re­gard, we un­der­stand that some­thing needs to be done ur­gent­ly if this In­dus­try is to sur­vive the neg­a­tive as­so­ci­a­tions that these in­ci­dents cre­ate," the let­ter added.

In the let­ter, the As­so­ci­a­tion in­di­cat­ed that it has a pro­pos­al for a so­lu­tion, "We be­lieve will con­tribute great­ly to the al­le­vi­a­tion of this prob­lem."

Fer­gu­son said that to date no meet­ing has been sched­uled by the Com­mis­sion­er.
"We need to put things in place to make sure that this in­dus­try does not shut down by the Gov­ern­ment," Fer­gu­son said.

"If we leave this sit­u­a­tion to go on peo­ple will lose their life and we don't want no more peo­ple to lose their life. We have mem­bers that will not en­ter­tain these acts (re­fer­ring to the theft of cop­per, scrap iron) com­ing in­to our yards. We will not au­tho­rize it, we will not sup­port it but it has peo­ple who don't have li­cens­es, peo­ple who just come in­to this busi­ness to pull a lit­tle change and they don't care what they do," he added.

Fer­gu­son said there are a lot of peo­ple who don't have li­cens­es but have yards who don't know the rules and just op­er­at­ing and there­fore added that there is an ur­gent need to dis­cuss with Ja­cob. How­ev­er, to date, Fer­gu­son said a meet­ing is yet to be sched­uled with the top CoP.
Fer­gu­son al­so dis­closed that there is a dire need for the amend­ment of the Act: The Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act of 1904 which clear­ly states that “it is il­le­gal for any per­son to deal in the scrap met­al un­less he/she has ob­tained a li­cense.”

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion has a mem­ber­ship of 120 li­censed deal­ers and not­ed that since the pan­dem­ic there has been a 25 per cent in­crease in the es­tab­lish­ment of il­le­gal deal­er­ships, "We have iden­ti­fied about 50 to 60 il­le­gal yards."

Fer­gu­son said when the Act is amend­ed il­le­gal yards can face hefty fines up to $300,000.