Another case for community action against crime

Monday, July 18, 2011

READERS will recall that the scrap metal trade was actually shut down by the Government in April last year because of the damage wrought on the country's infrastructure by unscrupulous persons operating within the sector.

The ban was lifted a month later after agreement on what were presumably airtight regulations to prevent or at least minimise theft and destruction of metallic installations.

As this newspaper understands it, among the new measures was that scrap metal slated for export should remain unprocessed and therefore identifiable. Also, only certified members of the scrap metal trade were eligible to be exporters.

It is clear that those measures have not served their intended purpose. If anything, the cynical scrapping of metallic infrastructure appears to be even more widespread and far-reaching now than it was 15 months ago.

The sugar industry, other sectors of the agricultural economy, the bauxite/alumina sector, the railway service, National Water Commission, National Irrigation Commission, Jamaica Public Service Company, the National Works Agency, among many others, have all reported losses in the region of millions of dollars.

Upwards of one billion dollars in damage is said to have been done over the past three years by metal thieves.

Even the dead have not been spared. Note reports that many graves in the May Pen Cemetery in Kingston have been desecrated by metal scavengers.

No wonder then that there are numerous and insistent calls for the new Industry, Investment and Commerce Minister Dr Christopher Tufton to shut down the sector once more.

New Agriculture Minister Mr Robert Montaque is among those urging him to do so. Since the latter made similar calls while he was in charge of the farm sector, he will no doubt empathise with his successor.

But though Dr Tufton has said that he will ban the trade if push comes to shove, he will have found, as did his predecessor Mr Karl Samuda, that it is easier said than done.

The truth is that Jamaica's scrap metal trade is highly lucrative, employing thousands at the informal and formal levels. It is part of a global metal recycling industry worth many billions of US dollars.

In such circumstances, a realistic solution can't be simply to try to kill and bury the local scrap metal sector. It is not going to stay dead and buried. Ways have got to be found for the sector to be cleaned up so that it can truly contribute to the country's development.

Improved policing must be an important part of the effort to stop the metal thieves. But how is that to be done, given that an under-manned, under-resourced constabulary is already stretched to the limit, struggling to cope with traditional crime?

This newspaper has long argued that the police and the Government should proactively - far more than is now the case - seek to involve every community in the effort to fight crime. This increasingly debilitating plague of metal thievery should provide even more incentive for that to happen.

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Another case for community action against crime