RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Scrap iron work­ers say they are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pay $200 for scrap col­lec­tors’ reg­is­tra­tion stick­ers to op­er­ate le­git­i­mate­ly.

The Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing 2023 stick­ers on Mon­day but sev­er­al work­ers who went to col­lect them at the Clax­ton Bay An­gli­can School said they found it dif­fi­cult to pay $200 for the stick­ers.

Shel­don Mor­raine said: “Col­lect­ing those stick­ers is a plus for van­men. Now you can’t go and sell iron by cer­tain yards if you don’t have a stick­er but it is hard for us be­cause now we have to find that $200 for a stick­er. I don’t know if they could give us the stick­er on hire pur­chase. They done say they want noth­ing in the yard if we don’t have a stick­er.”

With the scrap iron ex­port ban set to be lift­ed next month, Mor­raine said deal­ers are now pay­ing them $500 per tonne rather than $1,000.

“I had no Christ­mas be­cause I had no mon­ey. I planned to buy a bike for my son but I couldn’t buy that. There is a pro­ce­dure with the stick­er and you have to sub­mit these doc­u­ments,” he said.

“It’s hard be­cause we mak­ing just $50 and $60 per day. We have to study about buy­ing food, putting gas. Right now on­ly one man buy­ing iron and he buy­ing $500 a tonne not $1,000.”

Nigel Guer­ra said many work­ers who could not pay their loans had to give up their ve­hi­cles. He said many are now rent­ing vans.

Eli­jah Clement said he is wait­ing pa­tient­ly for the scrap iron ex­port ban to be lift­ed. An­oth­er work­er, Isa­iah Salazar, said hun­dreds of peo­ple are de­pen­dent on the in­dus­try and have been suf­fer­ing over the past few months.

Clax­ton Bay rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Razia Rea Mo­hammed said stick­er dis­tri­b­u­tion will con­tin­ue for the rest of the week. She said 4,000 stick­ers will be is­sued from Clax­ton Bay alone.

Mo­hammed said on­ly deal­ers seek­ing to be li­censed need po­lice cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter. Work­ers need­ing reg­is­tra­tion stick­ers must pro­vide a copy of their ID, dri­ver’s per­mit, cer­ti­fied copy and in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cate.

“There are over 25,000 peo­ple who have been with­out jobs. Men with fam­i­lies whose chil­dren are in school. We hope the ex­por­ta­tion opens up soon,” she said.

The six-month ban on scrap iron ex­ports took ef­fect on Au­gust 12.