RACKETEERING IN the scrap iron export trade has proven so costly, not only to Guyana but Jamaica also, that both these Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states have now invoked temporary bans on the business, pending introduction of more effective regulations and supervision.
Here at home, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, faced with the rising costs to the public and private sectors resulting from brazen thefts and illegal sales of scrap metals by unscrupulous elements, announced last Thursday a ban on the trade with immediate effect.
The Prime Minister has provided some specific examples of greedy dealers of the trade and the resulting dire consequences suffered by the public sector in some key areas, including drainage and irrigation systems, the sugar industry, in addition to the rascality extended to even churches and cemeteries.
For its part, Jamaica was also pointing, earlier in the week, to the cost of this crime as its government defended the recent ban imposed in the face of protests from some dealers in scrap metals.
As if revealing a common pattern in the scrap metals business, Jamaica (like Guyana) was last week also complaining against criminal activities that extended to the vandalising of critical agricultural equipment, with the country’s sugar industry being among the victim sectors.
With the exception of manufacturers who generate their own scrap metal, the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Karl Samuda, has now imposed a ban on all dealings in the business.
Guyana’s ban has coincided with new security initiatives, with the promise of concerted efforts to be pursued to ensure an effective blow against those seemingly bent on giving the scrap metals trade a very bad name, and at significant losses to the state and private businesses
Having deemed the trade to be officially ‘illegal’, Prime Minister Hinds, nevertheless, has signalled his willingness to receive representations from the Scrap Metal Dealers Association to determine how practical forms of cooperation could prove beneficial — but with no room any longer for the racket that compelled introduction of the ban.