MSJ supports Scrap Iron Dealers Assoc plan to salvage shipwrecks

The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) is urging the Prime Minister to engage the Scrap Iron Dealers Association (SIDA) in its initiative to salvage marine wrecks lying in this country’s oceans.

Underscoring that while the SIDA does not wish to be paid for this task, MSJ Political Leader David Abdulah said the initiative has the potential to become a foreign-exchange earner while removing environmental hazards among other benefits.

In a statement on Sunday, Abdulah called on Government not to drag its feet as the country sinks further into difficulty.

“Our foreign exchange situation continues to deteriorate. More and more people are unemployed. Workers’ earning power is being cut daily as prices rise. The majority of people are struggling to survive and many, many thousands are living in poverty.”

He said the MSJ has always maintained an alternative approach to development to change the economic structures of wealth and power.

To this end he said the scrap-iron sector’s very innovative proposals to stimulate the economy, create jobs, generate significant foreign exchange fits into that “out-of-the-box” thinking.

“SIDA has also developed some very savvy media programmes to publicise the importance and potential of this sector. It has called for the sector to be regulated to ensure compliance with the laws such as anti-money laundering.”

He said SIDA’s proposal to be given a contract to salvage all the marine wrecks around the country’s waters, “would raise the capital and organise the salvage of the ships and pay for this investment through the subsequent sale of the scrap metals obtained from the salvaged ships.

“This seems to the MSJ to be a win-win proposal. The country would be rid of wrecks that are an environmental hazard and a danger to those vessels that utilise our waters, the Government would not have to spend money to have this done, and SIDA would earn forex from the sale of the scrap metals and create hundreds of jobs.”

Yet, he observed that this sector has been largely “disregarded by officialdom, perhaps because it is not a fancy or glamourous business, operated in the main by small business-people who are socially unrelated to the traditional elites.

“In the past few years however, it has become better organised under the umbrella of the SIDA, putting forward a number of very innovative proposals for economic activity.”

He urged the Government to seriously engage this non-traditional sector that is SIDA.

“Already the small scrap metal firms that used to bid and purchase scrap metal from the former Petrotrin seem to have been locked out of the recent bidding process, a process that saw bids close more than six months ago but for which no award has yet been made.

“One of the measures by which Dr Rowley’s leadership will be judged is whether or not his Government has shifted the pattern of ownership of wealth in the country away from the traditional controllers.

“He promised much with the sale of the refinery and failed to deliver. Will he fail with respect to how they deal with SIDA? Time will tell, but to date the record is not good. “

Abdulah said Government has a responsibility to implement policies to improve the lives of its people, but squandered an opportunity presented by the pandemic to make real changes.