Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) in­sists it is not to blame for the in­creas­ing thefts at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage). This fol­lows an ul­ti­ma­tum giv­en to the group by Her­itage to stop the theft of its scrap met­al or face con­se­quences.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, the scrap iron deal­ers pre­sent­ed a let­ter from Her­itage dat­ed Au­gust 2 which stat­ed that in the last six months, the state-owned com­pa­ny had ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the theft of scrap met­al from its op­er­a­tion acreage de­spite ef­forts to boost se­cu­ri­ty.

Her­itage is call­ing on the scrap iron deal­ers to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion or they would be forced to seek gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

TTSI­DA pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said while he un­der­stands Her­itage’s con­cern, his as­so­ci­a­tion isn’t at fault.

“I am hold­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice re­spon­si­ble for all this theft ... You know what you want? You want this in­dus­try to shut down again and when it shuts down, it will be poor peo­ple suf­fer­ing and we will have to be out­side there call­ing on the gov­ern­ment, fight­ing the gov­ern­ment. When you could just en­force the laws that it has for this in­dus­try, you are not do­ing that,” he said.

Fer­gu­son added that TTSI­DA is will­ing to sit with the com­pa­ny to work things out.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Her­itage of­fi­cials said they plan to meet with the scrap iron deal­ers next week.

This sit­u­a­tion has de­vel­oped as the TTSI­DA faces clo­sure of the scrap iron in­dus­try yet again as its ex­port li­cense is due to ex­pire on Au­gust 14.

Fer­gu­son warned that if that hap­pened, tens of thou­sands of peo­ple would be out of jobs.

He said to make mat­ters worse, busi­ness has been slow late­ly and the TTSI­DA is in dire need of more in­spec­tors.

An emo­tion­al Fer­gu­son plead­ed with the au­thor­i­ties to meet with them and stressed the im­por­tance of the scrap iron in­dus­try. He said he hopes that the TTSI­DA is tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly in re­cy­cling and point­ed out the var­i­ous ways it helps clean up the en­vi­ron­ment.

“We have sev­en more days be­fore this in­dus­try prob­a­bly shut down again and you might find that prob­a­bly load­ing might fin­ish load to­day or to­mor­row and noth­ing will be tak­ing place next week,” he said.

“By Mon­day most peo­ple will be shut­ting down be­cause they don’t know if they will be re­ceiv­ing an ex­ten­sion of our li­cense again to op­er­ate and this is a fright­en­ing thing.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said the mat­ter will soon be be­fore Cab­i­net for its con­sid­er­a­tion.