Prime Minister's export ban order may be the death knell of the legitimate scrap metal industry
Stabroek News
May 18, 2007
The immediate future of the country's scrap metal industry appears in serious jeopardy following an order by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds earlier this week that scrap exports be halted with immediate effect.
With local scrap metal exporters now reduced to pleading with the authorities for yet another chance to correct the shortcomings in the industry, principally the theft, destruction and sale of parts of the metal-based infrastructure of the country's utility companies, the new ban order by the Prime Minister provides no time frame for the resumption of scrap metal exports.
The statement from the Prime Minister's Office said that the new ban decision was taken following reports from local utility companies of a fresh upsurge of metal theft by thieves whose principal target has been the copper-based cables used by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) in its telephone service buildout. The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) and the Guyana Water Inc (GWI) have, to a lesser extent, also been targeted by metal thieves.
Head of GT&T's security operations Edgar Blackman confirmed on Wednesday that the company had indeed suffered a spate of recent losses of copper cable and that he had communicated with both the police and the Office of the Prime Minister about the losses. Blackman told Stabroek Business that there had been two recent incidents of cable theft in Sophia where the company is setting up its new Line Plant and that there had also been incidents of cable theft at other locations in the city. He said that the losses which had been reported to GT&T by Sophia residents, had amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars." The GPL Public Relations Department declined to say whether or not that company had suffered any recent losses.
Last year the Office of the Prime Minister had threatened to impose a ban on scrap metal exports in the face of what it said was a spate of metal thefts that were seriously damaging the operations of the utility companies. Much of the stolen metal was traced to legitimate scrap metal dealers some of whom were accused of acting in consort with the thieves. Among the measures put in place in an effort to stamp our the practice were a temporary ban on the export of non-ferrous metal and an inspection regime that allowed representatives of the utility companies to examine consignments of scrap before these were exported.
Scrap metal dealers had also announced the setting up of a Guyana Scrap Metal Dealers Association which they said was designed to work with the law enforcement agencies, the Office of the Prime Minister and local utility companies in an effort to "clean up" the industry. When Stabroek Business spoke with Malik Cave, a consultant to the association earlier this year he said that local dealers were still awaiting the lifting of a ban order imposed by the Prime Minister's office.
On Wednesday a local scrap metal dealer told Stabroek Business that the new export ban order may well represent the death knell of the scrap metal industry since he felt that it was unlikely that the order would be lifted "any time in the near future." The dealer said that he feared that persons in the trade would now have to seek "other business options."
Meanwhile another source in the industry said that the export ban order was likely to increase the illegal trans-border export of scrap metal to Brazil and Suriname. The source said that there had already been an increase in the illegal export of scrap metal in the wake of the earlier export ban order by the Prime Minister's Office. "Now that there appears to have been a long term ban on exports it is likely that more scrap will go across our borders since there is no shortage of markets outside of Guyana," the source said.