Faris challenges Govt’s handling of scrap iron industry after TSTT fire

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count for its man­age­ment of the scrap iron in­dus­try, fol­low­ing the sus­pect­ed ar­son at­tack at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) com­pound in Laven­tille over the week­end.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said the in­ci­dent rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about the pro­tec­tion of State as­sets and the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to cop­per theft.

“The Gov­ern­ment has to ac­count for the fact that there is a scrap iron mora­to­ri­um that’s on. You’ll re­call that this phe­nom­e­non of theft of pub­lic prop­er­ty for scrap iron oc­cu­pied cen­tral at­ten­tion un­der our gov­ern­ment. We draft­ed a scrap iron deal­er’s bill. Li­cences were put in­to place. We’re now stand­ing near­ly two years in­to this Gov­ern­ment, they have a du­ty to ac­count now as to how they’re man­ag­ing this,” Al-Rawi said.

He al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse, point­ing to the re­cent use of states of emer­gency.

“Bear in mind, we’ve just come out of ef­fec­tive­ly back-to-back states of emer­gen­cies oc­cu­py­ing near­ly a year and a half. And then an event like this hap­pens. So, we have to see what is re­al­ly go­ing to be the co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse to the is­sue of cop­per as it’s al­leged to be part of this ar­son.”

Al-Rawi al­so re­ferred to the po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions of the blaze, not­ing the sig­nif­i­cant val­ue of cop­per as­so­ci­at­ed with TSTT.

“We’ve seen that TSTT has put out a state­ment. We’ve heard from Min­is­ter Padarath, who some­how knows more than every­body else,” he said.

“So, first things first is that there was dam­age. Sec­ond­ly, there is a state in­vest­ment in TSTT, $20 mil­lion in cop­per is a sig­nif­i­cant point.”

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be left in the hands of law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties.

Al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue out­side Par­lia­ment, he said, “My opin­ion is we’ve seen footage of what looks like per­sons de­lib­er­ate­ly set­ting the fire. So I’m like every­body else in Trinidad and To­ba­go look­ing for­ward to jus­tice be­ing done.”

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath pre­vi­ous­ly said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were ex­am­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween in­di­vid­u­als in­side and out­side TSTT, in­clud­ing ser­vice providers. How­ev­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer has rub­bished the sug­ges­tion that union mem­bers would be part of such ac­tiv­i­ty, since they earn their liv­ing from the com­pa­ny and it was in their best in­ter­est to pro­tect its as­sets.

The Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion has al­so called for the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of those re­spon­si­ble for the fire, which left a fire­fight­er at­tached to the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion hos­pi­talised with su­per­fi­cial fa­cial in­juries and suf­fer­ing from the ef­fects of smoke in­hala­tion.