Sascha Wil­son

With the scrap iron in­dus­try still on a par­tial lock­down, the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion on Tues­day gave out more than 700 food ham­pers to dis­placed work­ers and their fam­i­lies.

Speak­ing with re­porters in Clax­ton Bay, Alan Fer­gu­son said they in­tend to con­tin­ue the ini­tia­tive as thou­sands of mem­bers have been suf­fer­ing since last Au­gust when the Gov­ern­ment im­posed the six-month ban on the ex­port of scrap iron.

The Gov­ern­ment par­tial­ly lift­ed the ban last De­cem­ber, but the ban on cop­per was ex­tend­ed to a year.

Fer­gu­son said his as­so­ci­a­tion has writ­ten to the Gov­ern­ment but has not re­ceived any re­sponse. He said, “We have not one word to tell our mem­bers, not one word to peo­ple who are poor and suf­fer­ing...noth­ing from the Gov­ern­ment. It is a sad thing.”

While he is not a “hater of the Gov­ern­ment,” Fer­gu­son said he knows what it feels to not have food or be able to pay bills.

“That is why I have to be get­ting on so and mak­ing me sound like I have some­thing against the Gov­ern­ment, but is not be­cause of that. I want them to un­der­stand that there are thou­sands of peo­ple in this in­dus­try that get feed every sin­gle day when this in­dus­try opens, when this in­dus­try run­ning and when you take this from them, a lot of them may want to string over to crime and that is why we say open open back the in­dus­try and we will fix it. We will work with you to fix the prob­lems,” he said.

With mon­ey from stake­hold­ers with­in the in­dus­try, he said they were able to put the ham­pers to­geth­er.

Mean­while, scrap iron col­lec­tor Dan­gles Jones, ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dis­re­spect­ing and un­fair­ly treat­ing mem­bers of the in­dus­try.

He said the Gov­ern­ment lied be­cause the ban was sup­posed to be for six months and now they have ex­tend­ed the ban on cop­per to a year.

“We are suf­fer­ing and feel­ing the pain and they not stand­ing up to their word. It is on­ly lies they feed­ing we and de­ceit­ful­ness. The Gov­ern­ment can­not pro­vide em­ploy­ment, peo­ple cre­ate their own em­ploy­ment to sus­tain them­selves and they come and van­ish that. What sense that make,” he lament­ed.

An­oth­er scrap iron col­lec­tor, De­von Gib­bons, said he has three daugh­ters in school and he is do­ing “what­ev­er to make ends meet, to put food on the ta­ble, pay bills.”

Gib­bons said it costs him $300 in school trans­port for a week.

Al­though their em­ploy­ment was sud­den­ly tak­en away, he said the Gov­ern­ment did not even of­fer them any so­cial grants to help them get by.

An­oth­er work­er, Vaughn Sylvester, al­so com­plained, “We are suf­fer­ing, we did not have no Christ­mas, chil­dren can­not go to school, peo­ple have ve­hi­cles to pay for.”

He said they spent $200 to put an of­fi­cial scrap iron stick­er on their ve­hi­cles. “We pay $200 to get a stick­er on our van and up to now we can­not make back a $1 from that $200 we spent,” he added.