Bill to turn screws on scrap metal trade passed

A bill to amend to the Old Metal Dealers Act was passed yesterday in the National Assembly giving sweeping powers to the Prime Minister to halt the export of scrap metal if deemed necessary.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds who tabled the amendments justified the move by government by pointing to continuing vandalism of the property of the three utilities.

The amendments empower the minister to prohibit all old metal from being shipped or otherwise exported from Guyana for a specified period of time not exceeding one year if he considers it necessary in the interest of preventing or curbing any illegal activity.

Additionally the bill imposes an immediate increase in fines for any dealer who breaches the rules governing the trade. A first offence will require offenders to pay a fine of not less than $20,000 and not exceeding $100,000 and imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months. For every subsequent offence, the bill now mandates a fine of not less than $100,000 and not exceeding $1M and imprisonment for a term not exceeding a year.

The bill also now allows the minister to make regulations subject to negative resolution by the National Assembly for increasing or reducing the annual registration fee for dealers.

Hinds said the decision by government was taken following months of admonishing scrap metal dealers to put themselves right and help to curb vandalism.

Tourism and Industry Minister Manniram Prasad supported the motion by his colleague and admitted too that the trade was viable but noted that certain components would have to be streamlined. He said this was necessary particularly in light of the increase in the number of dealers over the last three years.

Anarchy

However, the main opposition, the People’s National Congress Reform-1G said while it would support any bill seeking to further regulate the trade, higher fines and registration fees as well as giving the minister the power to table regulations in this regard will not adequately address the issue of vandalism. “High fees and fines do not address the illegalities, we have a new breed of dealers that are wreaking havoc and those are the unlicensed ones that are on the ground and I have not heard the Prime Minister address this issue,” PNCR-1G MP Clarissa Riehl said.

She argued that non-compliance with the rules already in place had caused the problem and noted too that nothing much was done by the administration to ensure that those laws were continuously enforced in the first place.

The main opposition party believes that anarchy was allowed to prevail since the police were unable to effectively monitor the lucrative trade. “They are overworked, underpaid and understaffed and while each police division is supposed to book the activities of the dealers in each division they can’t do this because of these limitations,” she said.

In this vein, she recommended that the government take the amendments back to the drawing board and set up a proper monitoring system, which she said such a lucrative trade deserved. “If the provisions set out in the law are properly observed there would be no need for cessation of exports,” Riehl said.

The PNCR-1G recommended that the bill should have addressed the problems on all sides but the fees and fines only apply to dealers.

“What about the thieves… to give them a mere slap on the wrist is leaving the problem lopsided,” Riehl asserted and recommended that a more holistic approach be taken in amending the bill. “The thing to do is not only police licensed dealers but also look at those illegal dealers too, who are operating in the underground, she added, as she refused to consent to the amendments which she deemed inadequate.

Alliance For Change (AFC), member of parliament Raphael Trotman in his presentation on the amendments, like the PNCR-1G, felt that the industry needed to be better supervised and noted too that Government had a duty to police it better than it had been doing in the past.

However he was surprised that the government had not taken to the House, measures that they have already put in place to enforce regulations related to the trade. “This trade is lucrative and in other countries the governments are not moving to ban it but they are better regulating it and the high tariffs and fees that are being charged is being used to regulate the trade better,” Trotman asserted.

He said the trade was universal and so it would continue whether the government threatens to stop it or not and if efforts were being made to block exports, regulations would still be breached and dealers will try all avenues to export.

He told the National Assembly too that all the dealers should not be castigated for the mistakes of some. The AFC said it believed that no moves should be made to stop the trade.

Anecdotal

The United Force Leader and Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir joined in supporting the amendments and argued that the opposition gave purely anecdotal examples to oppose the bill. The immediate past tourism minister said the police had been clamping down on many vehicles transporting scrap and so he felt that much was being done to police the trade. Guyana Action Party (GAP)/ROAR Member of Parliament Everall Franklin said his party welcomed the measures being proposed to add more control to the trade, which he added has grown over the years. He too supported the amendments to the bill but said he looked forward to seeing sensible approaches to dealing with the issue. “We have so many laws here in Guyana, but our problem is actual enforcement, we need to prevent the vandalism but how we will do this, is something which requires more thought.

“While we talk about raising fines, this would mean little and it still comes back to effective control and in this area more thought needs to be given,” he continued.

Following the points raised, Prime Minister Hinds said that all other factors were being considered by the Government and steps will be taken to ensure that policing was taken care of.

“The step to putting a halt may be a big-stick approach, but we would have to hold that threat and ensure that the dealers exercise good judgment and not receive unlawful material”, Hinds stated at the conclusion of his presentation.

The amendments to the Act come after the government decided to take a more ‘hands-on’ approach to deal with the issue of vandalism which plagued the utility companies, particularly the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T). What started off as consultations with the dealers in an effort to have them understand the implications of the trade and what it was costing the utilities, ended with a sound warning by the Prime Minister that if they did not put themselves in order and observe the rules, he would take the necessary steps to ban the trade.

But after a man was electrocuted in Linden after if was found that the earth wire for his house’s electricity supply was vandalized, the prime minister publicly stated that the trade would be banned as of January 1 this year.

Since then, dealers have formed an association and had urged the government to give them a chance to police themselves and vowed to help curb vandalism.

And yesterday after the parliamentary proceedings, the association’s technical advisor Malek Cave told this newspaper that it is prepared to work along with government to regulate the trade and abide by whatever monitoring mechanisms are put in place.

“We have gotten the impression that they might not enforce the ban after all and so we’re happy about that and we will continue to follow the rules,” Cave said briefly.

Other regulations governing the trade, which the minister has been given the right to make should be laid in the National Assembly shortly.