Up to yesterday the Scrap Metal Unit of the Ministry of Business was still refusing to budge from a posture of steering clear of reports suggesting that scrap metal culled from Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) estates and believed to be worth billions of dollars had been sold but that no money had been received by the Corporation.
Earlier this week and arising out of several exchanges with Head of the Ministry’s Scrap Metal Unit Ian Smith, this newspaper was told that its position continued to be that the former Minister of Business, Dominic Gaskin had gone on record as distancing himself from the matter. On Wednesday Smith said that the Unit was preparing to inspect scrap metal deposits at two GuySuCo estates and that is was not prepared to make any disclosures before coming to a more enlightened understanding of the issue.
While the administration of scrap metal including its disposal and export falls under the jurisdiction of the Scrap Metal Unit, the scrap itself is the property of GuySuCo and remains stored on the premises of its factories.
Immediately prior to demitting office, Gaskin was quoted in a section of the media as saying that the Ministry of Business’ Scrap Metal Unit’s role is limited to writing to various state entities that sell scrap to provide them with information on the registered scrap dealers. Stabroek
Business was unable to clearly determine whether the inspection of the GuySuCo sites being undertaken by the Scrap Metal Unit would lead to any further pronouncement regarding the reported sale of the scrap from the estates.
It had been explained to this newspaper that the sheer volume of the scrap being stored at the closed estates meant that it would be difficult to determine if smaller amounts might not have already been removed from some or all of the sites though this newspaper was further informed that it was unlikely the $3 billion worth of scrap metal can “simply vanish.” Accordingly, Smith told Stabroek Business that he was not ruling out the possibility that the Unit may be in a position to be “more helpful on the matter” once the inspections on the estates had been completed. He said, however, that one of his priorities was with providing the new Minister of Business, Haimraj Rajkumar with a briefing on the issue.
Stabroek Business understands that the Scrap Metal Unit is also likely to visit Linden to inspect sites holding deposits of scrap from both the now defunct Linmine as well as the area in which the majority Chinese-owned Bosai mining is operating.
