At least two outdoor advertising companies have welcomed the government’s shutdown of the scrap metal industry, saying they have lost millions in theft of electronic billboards, presumably for sale into the trade.

“While we sympathise and empathise with those immediately affected, there needs to be some regulation,” general manager of Caledonia Outdoor Advertising, Dawn McNaughton told the Observer.

McNaughton’s counterpart, Wayne Chi of National Outdoor Advertising, said he too sympathised with those whose livelihoods had been affected by the ban, but he was “very happy” with the government’s decision.

“It gives us a chance to figure out maybe how to make some sanity out of this situation…It gives us some breathing room,” Chi said.

Both McNaughton and Chi complained bitterly of losing millions of dollars as thieves continued to dismantle their companies’ electronic billboards and illegally sell the parts into the industry.

“They have been scrapping them completely and then going back another time and take the frame,” McNaughton said, adding that her company had lost two billboards and sections of two others.

Chi said his company had lost well over a million dollars, while McNaughton said her company had lost much more.

“I am guestimating that we have lost $10 million to date,” McNaughton said.

The reasons for the big money losses, both said, were that the particular billboards, Trimedia, are not only expensive, costing several thousand United States dollars, but they were expensive to import. Then they have to contend with paying local authorities the requisite fees to erect the signs.

“It’s only sign people who import these things and a scrap metal dealer purchases these things and says they have no idea where the person got it?” Chi asked, suggesting that the best way to cut out such illegality is through licensing.

One man who was held in broad daylight by the police, McNaughton said, claimed to have been told that those were the signs they should take because people were buying them.

Detective Sergeant Leroy Radcliffe of the Half-Way-Tree Police Station’s Crime Investigation Bureau said there were currently several matters in the courts for illegal trading of scrap metal.

“We have been having raids, we are putting a dent in this sort of thing,” Radcliffe told the Observer before the government’s crackdown.

Superintendent Derrick ‘Cowboy’ Knight of the Hunt’s Bay Police Station said one of the difficulties in curbing illegality in the industry was the speed with which the metals were smelted, therefore making them unidentifiable.

“The evidence has to be there because they [dealers] get both legal and illegal scrap metal. There is no law against it. Mere suspicion is not enough. There must be a complainant,” he said.

“One dealer in Riverton has been operating for a while; there are others in St Catherine, Clarendon, and other places in Kingston, because it’s a big business,” Knight said, calling for any relevant legislation to place accountability on the person accepting illegal metals as well as the person selling them.