KEVON FELMINE

Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son says he is ready to tie a hand­ker­chief around his head and go to “war” to save the lo­cal in­dus­try.

He claims for­eign­ers are il­le­gal­ly tak­ing over scrap met­al yards.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Roy­al Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do, Fer­gu­son com­pared him­self to Don­ald Trump, pledg­ing to dri­ve for­eign busi­ness­men from coun­tries such as Chi­na, In­dia, Pak­istan, and Bangladesh out of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He ac­cused them of tak­ing over the lo­cal scrap met­al in­dus­try, say­ing these were busi­ness­men the TTSI­DA in­vit­ed to Trinidad to pur­chase and ex­port scrap met­al. Now he claimed they were tak­ing con­trol of lo­cal yards, buy­ing di­rect­ly from col­lec­tors, and ex­port­ing.

Fer­gu­son ex­plained that many deal­ers are still reel­ing from the fi­nan­cial loss­es they suf­fered in 2022 when the Gov­ern­ment shut down the in­dus­try fol­low­ing ram­pant theft. Dur­ing this time, he said for­eign busi­ness­men be­friend­ed strug­gling scrap­yard own­ers, strik­ing deals to op­er­ate their com­pounds. But now, he claimed, these for­eign­ers are pay­ing lo­cal deal­ers the same price they pay scav­engers and col­lec­tors, mak­ing it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for lo­cal deal­ers to com­pete.

“I am go­ing to be the lo­cal Don­ald Trump, you know, be­cause you see these peo­ple who want to come and cause hav­oc in our place. The first ones to cause our in­dus­try to shut down were them. If they want it to shut down again, and they are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to make it hap­pen, I am say­ing that we have to get rid of them. If we have to protest and do what­ev­er we must, we will get rid of them,” Fer­gu­son said.

He ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of their op­er­a­tions, claim­ing they are us­ing li­censed deal­ers to op­er­ate their yards. Fer­gu­son even ac­cused the for­eign­ers of load­ing stolen wires and mo­tors on­to con­tain­ers for ex­port. He claimed he re­port­ed the mat­ter to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

TTSI­DA vice pres­i­dent Er­ros See­jat­tan de­scribed the for­eign-op­er­at­ed busi­ness­es as “gyp­sy yards,” ac­cus­ing them of ex­ploit­ing lo­cal re­sources and dis­ap­pear­ing once the ma­te­ri­als are de­plet­ed.

“These gyp­sy yards will do any­thing to make a dol­lar. Once the re­sources are gone, they leave the lo­cals to strug­gle,” See­jat­tan said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it planned to vis­it these for­eign-run yards to protest.