JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA), Al­lan Fer­gu­son, says one rec­om­men­da­tion to ad­dress cop­per theft is to cen­tralise all scrap yards in or­der to bet­ter mon­i­tor deal­ers’ in­ven­to­ry.

His sug­ges­tion came dur­ing a stake­hold­er meet­ing that in­clud­ed of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, po­lice and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The meet­ing, which took place yes­ter­day, fol­lowed an in­ci­dent a day ear­li­er in which a man al­leged­ly broke in­to a Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) sub­sta­tion at Brechin Cas­tle to steal cop­per. The sus­pect re­port­ed­ly came in­to con­tact with a 132 kV break­er, caus­ing a fault that re­sult­ed in a volt­age dip.

In 2022, the then gov­ern­ment banned the ex­port of cop­per, ex­cept for spe­cif­ic man­u­fac­tur­ers whose waste prod­uct in­clud­ed cop­per. The lo­cal sale of cop­per to scrap iron deal­er­ships was al­so banned. That ban was lat­er lift­ed, fol­low­ing a rise in van­dal­ism at pub­lic util­i­ties and in­fra­struc­ture.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the lat­est in­ci­dent of van­dal­ism, Fer­gu­son said his as­so­ci­a­tion now sup­ports the rein­tro­duc­tion of a cop­per ban—some­thing he had pre­vi­ous­ly op­posed when it was first in­tro­duced.

“If you ask me what I think about what they’re sup­posed to do with the cop­per, I will rec­om­mend that they hold on this cop­per. Ban the ex­port of the cop­per. Ban the pur­chase of the cop­per right now. That is the as­so­ci­a­tion po­si­tion and what they should do, be­cause more things need to be put in place where cop­per is con­cerned, ex­port­ing cop­per and buy­ing cop­per,” he said.

He added that one of the main chal­lenges fac­ing the in­dus­try was en­force­ment. He said that af­ter the ini­tial ban four years ago, sev­er­al scrap iron deal­ers failed to re­open op­er­a­tions, which led to some il­le­gal op­er­a­tors fa­cil­i­tat­ing cop­per theft.

“Trinidad is a law­less coun­try and if we do not mon­i­tor what peo­ple are do­ing and put all the checks and bal­ances in the in­dus­try, then peo­ple will con­tin­ue break­ing the law and steal­ing and do­ing a lot of things. That is why we asked the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to do some checks and en­force­ment and vis­it oth­er peo­ple. There are a lot of yards op­er­at­ing with­out a li­cence and a lot of peo­ple just come in­to the busi­ness with­out a li­cence and they op­er­ate there,” Fer­gu­son said.

He added: “What we’re go­ing to do is cen­tralise the scrap in­dus­try. We will have a south area, a cen­tral area, Ari­ma area and a Port-of-Spain area. And these ar­eas will be where on­ly scrap yards will be op­er­at­ing. So, we could mon­i­tor what’s go­ing on much bet­ter.”

While calls and mes­sages to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and Trade Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj went unan­swered, Fer­gu­son en­cour­aged scrap met­al deal­ers to ex­er­cise due dili­gence when con­duct­ing busi­ness.

In a me­dia re­lease fol­low­ing the in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Fer­gu­son said scrap iron deal­ers should im­me­di­ate­ly re­port any sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions or ac­tiv­i­ties to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion re­it­er­ates its com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing re­spon­si­ble in­dus­try prac­tices and sup­port­ing mea­sures that safe­guard na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture and the pub­lic in­ter­est,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Fer­gu­son said the pro­posed cen­tralised lo­ca­tions would as­sist in mon­i­tor­ing scrap yards and en­sur­ing they op­er­ate legal­ly.