The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah be­lieves the gov­ern­ment act­ed too late to ban the ex­port of cop­per.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held vir­tu­al­ly on Sun­day, Ab­du­lah said it’s been more than two months since the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion has been call­ing for a ban on cop­per ex­ports, yet the gov­ern­ment ig­nored the call.

 “We have been en­gaged in di­a­logue with them for more than a year. TTSI­DA made a call more than two months ago for the gov­ern­ment to ban the ex­port of cop­per. Had the Govt act­ed at that time, it could have well have put a break on the steal­ing of cop­per —whether at the in­stal­la­tion at WASA, T&TEC, TSTT lines or Dig­i­cel lines,” Ab­du­lah said.

He added that the six-month ban on scrap iron, in­clud­ing cop­per will put a strain on many fam­i­lies.

“You are putting the bur­den of ad­just­ment on them by your fail­ures to act, caus­ing them to lose their jobs. When they lose busi­ness, they are los­ing their liveli­hood. Shut­ting down the whole scrap iron in­dus­try for six months, when you could have shut down the cop­per ex­port for three months and keep the rest of the in­dus­try go­ing while you are deal­ing with il­le­gal­i­ty,” Ab­du­lah added.

He al­so ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of threat­en­ing work­ers.

“The on­ly per­sons who can be charged un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act are the work­ers in that es­sen­tial ser­vice. What he (Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds) was do­ing about talk­ing about IRA and they could take ac­tion against peo­ple. What you are do­ing threat­en­ing work­ers Fitzger­ald Hinds?” Ab­du­lah ques­tioned.

He al­so said the gov­ern­ment was talk­ing about an­ti-ter­ror­ism laws with­out a shred of ev­i­dence, not­ing that in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing was not be­ing put to good use.

“None of that in­tel­li­gence has re­sult­ed in a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in this coun­try. The mur­der rate is at a hor­ren­dous lev­el.  Peo­ple are be­ing killed every day. Wan­ton vi­o­lence tak­ing place.

Even po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing kid­napped and robbed. That hap­pened some months ago. Peo­ple are not safe in their homes. We have home in­va­sions; rob­beries on the streets of Port-of-Spain and else­where. Car thefts and so on,” Ab­du­lah lament­ed.

He al­so ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of try­ing to de­mo­nize WASA work­ers as they did with Petrotrin work­ers.