SCRAP METAL SAGA

The Editorial of the Daily Gleaner of Thursday July 28^th read: SCRAP METAL BAN A CONCESSION TO DISORDER: After read­ing the arti­cle I was left befud­dled and dis​ori​ent​ed​.My only response was …huh ? Now let me just say I will not ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty or spir­it in which the edi­to­r­i­al piece was writ­ten. After all the cen­tral theme seem to have been, not bow­ing to crime, at least I am pre­pared to give that to the Editor , But you know me I am always on the side of the rule of law, so I will embrace the the­o­ry of the ene­my of my ene­my is my friend , this once. Well I think the Editor was unpleas­ant­ly sur­prised. All hell broke loose on the online ver­sion of their pub­li­ca­tion, read­ers unleashed an avalanche of dis­gust and con­dem­na­tion at the Article,and on this I must com­mend the mod­er­a­tors for pub­lish­ing 32 com­ments which almost in total­i­ty ripped the Article to shreds. Knowing how the mod­er­a­tors of that forum oper­ate , I won­der how many angry com­ments were actu­al­ly scrubbed. But lets not get ahead of our­selves, lets hear what the Editor had to say.

We are in sym­pa­thy with Mr Karl Samuda’s posi­tion on the deci­sion by his suc­ces­sor, Dr Christopher Tufton, to shut down the scrap met­al indus­try and ban the export of the stuff.

It smacks, as Mr Samuda says, of “sur­ren­der­ing to the rogue ele­ments”. Put anoth­er way, the move rep­re­sents anoth­er retreat of law and order.We, of course, do not pre­sume that the conun­drum pre­sent­ed to Dr Tufton, the recent­ly appoint­ed invest­ment and com­merce min­is­ter, was to be eas­i­ly tra­versed or solved. Nor did it devel­op under his watch.[dai­ly glean­er] Ok mis­ter edi­tor, we are at a loss here,.….. real­ly? so the min­is­ter decides to clamp down on the pil­lag­ing and plun­der of the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture, he insti­tutes a tem­po­rary ban with a view to fig­ure out a way for­ward and you object ? On what grounds do you object sir? For Mr Samuda had strug­gled with the prob­lem of dam­age to infra­struc­ture and theft by scav­engers, who rus­tle met­al of all kinds to cash in on the high price for scrap on the world mar­ket. Indeed, Dr Tufton esti­mates that util­i­ty com­pa­nies and oth­er legit­i­mate busi­ness­es, includ­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies, have lost up to J$1 bil­lion in mate­r­i­al over the past three years to met­al thieves, who some­times rip down pow­er and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, with neg­a­tive con­se­quences to eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The prob­lem grew worse as the avail­abil­i­ty of scrap met­al declined, as the price of the com­mod­i­ty hiked and more play­ers entered the busi­ness.[glean­er edi­tor] Great point , and I would imag­ine that since you are con­ver­sant with those real­i­ties then you would see the need for at least a halt of this busi­ness. A halt that would allow for a lev­el-head­ed assess­ment to be done. After all one can­not turn around and head in the oppo­site direc­tion from a dead sprint with­out first com­ing to a stop. But no, the edi­tor went on thus>.

Damning Statement on Insecurity

The Government’s deci­sion to shut down the sec­tor ought to give the aver­age Jamaican no joy, no mat­ter the spin of the Administration, and even if it has the desired effect of curb­ing the pil­lag­ing and deface­ment. For the deci­sion is a state­ment about inse­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try; a tac­it admis­sion by the State of its inabil­i­ty to pro­tect either pub­lic or pri­vate prop­er­ty. This is pre­cise­ly the point we sought to make when Mr Samuda, then the respon­si­ble min­is­ter, recov­ered, by pri­vate ini­tia­tive, a stolen price­less bronze sculp­ture by Edna Manley that was report­ed­ly on its way to being scrap met­al export. No one, in so far as we are aware, was ever arrest­ed, charged, pros­e­cut­ed or con­vict­ed for that theft. Mr Samuda, it appears, has come around to an appre­ci­a­tion of the dan­ger­ous con­se­quences of this kind of sur­ren­der “to the rogue ele­ments”. That, notwith­stand­ing, it is dif­fi­cult for us to believe that it is beyond the capac­i­ty of our Government to ensure, with­in the con­text of a sys­tem of free enter­prise, the order­ly oper­a­tion of a sec­tor of a few dozen peo­ple.[glean­er editor]

The Government’s deci­sion to shut down the sec­tor ought to give the aver­age Jamaican no joy, no mat­ter the spin of the admin­is­tra­tion: Ok so I thought the Article was sup­posed to give an hon­est Editorial assess­ment of a very seri­ous prob­lem , one of many plagu­ing our coun­try. But this seem to be anoth­er cri­tique of the Government. Don’t get me wrong ‚that is the Editorial and indeed the Newspaper’s right, but I thought we were dis­cussing the scrap met­al ban. Anyway since the Editor raised the ques­tion of not acqui­esc­ing to crim­i­nal­i­ty , does­n’t the Editor then agree that the move by Minister Tufton is exact­ly what is need­ed to stem the dis­man­tling of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture? I thought that hav­ing said all of that he would real­ize the fal­la­cy of his argu­ments and pull back from the brink, but no he had more to say.

[Bad sig­nal]

[If the Jamaican State can’t man­age this, what ought the mass of the Jamaican peo­ple to assume about its abil­i­ty to pre­serve their safe­ty and to pro­tect the right of indi­vid­ual prop­er­ty and, more impor­tant, the main­te­nance of law and order, which is the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of the State? But sup­pos­ing that Dr Tufton’s fin­ger-in-the-dyke solu­tion suf­fices for now, his longer-term pro­pos­al for the export of scrap met­al seems prob­lem­at­ic. Companies that gen­er­ate scrap met­al will be allowed, accord­ing to the min­is­ter, to apply for per­mits to export that scrap. This sug­gests that these firms will be forced into a line of busi­ness out­side their core port­fo­lio. And what of oth­er scrap met­al gen­er­at­ed by house­holds or by firms that don’t have the capac­i­ty to organ­ise their own export? We, per­haps, can look for­ward to there being plen­ty of scrap with which to block roads while peo­ple demand jus­tice].[glean­er editor]

Mister edi­tor , the coun­try is drown­ing in the blood of the inno­cent , last week 20 peo­ple were report­ed slaughtered,in a coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple , how long do you think it will take to reach you and oth­ers who feel it is some­one else’s prob­lem. The coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces , under-staffed, under-funded,under-supported, over worked, under paid and demor­al­ized, are find­ing it a huge strug­gle just to con­tain the killing spree which obtains in Jamaica.Our secu­ri­ty forces run­ning from one hot spot to anoth­er, it real­ly is as you said stick­ing their fin­ger in the dyke, try­ing to stem the flow of blood. Arguing that the State should be in a posi­tion to stem the infra­struc­tur­al dis­man­tling is a ridicu­lous attempt at pos­tur­ing and bears no rela­tion­ship with an under­stand­ing of the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ty. The coun­try is fight­ing an exis­ten­tial bat­tle between civ­i­liza­tion and out­right anar­chy, the lat­ter, sup­port­ed and fund­ed by pow­er­ful and well-con­nect­ed peo­ple with­in the coun­try. The forces of good are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time in that fight, where are the resources to come from that would secure cop­per wire on tele­phone poles and bridge rail­ings? I under­stand the com­ments in the con­text of what ought to be the prop­er course of action, but the coun­try is sim­ply not in a posi­tion to do this , so we are left with a sit­u­a­tion of deal­ing with what is pos­si­ble. It sim­ply is not pos­si­ble to police all of Jamaica’s infra­struc­ture, that makes it dou­bly impor­tant, what the Minister did.

As some read­ers have argued online, Jamaica’s scrap met­al indus­try was nev­er a sus­tain­able indus­try to begin with, it is a oppor­tunis­tic indus­try,[indus­try ]used loose­ly . The coun­try does not man­u­fac­ture scrap met­al, it fol­lows that soon­er or lat­er it would get to this, mean­ing those who sell scrap met­al would inevitably resort to steal­ing the prod­uct par­tic­u­lar­ly when viewed along­side the high demand for the prod­uct. The dilem­ma posed to legit­i­mate scrap met­al deal­ers is not con­fined to that sec­tor, but is rather a greater indict­ment on the Jamaican psy­che. If it’s not scrap met­al it would be some­thing else, if some­how investors set up busi­ness­es to buy old build­ing bricks, in no time Spanish town as we know it would be no more . People would lit­er­al­ly dis­man­tle the old cap­i­tal. The issue here is the lev­el of civic-mind­ed­ness that is inher­ent in our peo­ple, or the lack there­of. I await the howls of dis­agree­ment com­ing from the [“eat a food crowd”] . As far as most of these peo­ple are con­cerned it mat­ters not if they destroy the coun­try, brick by brick and have to tread water in the Caribbean sea to [eat the food], coun­try be damned, eat­ing a food is paramount.

Many years ago as a young Police Officer I was part of a team of offi­cers involved in an ear­ly morn­ing raid in a cer­tain com­mu­ni­ty just on the envi­rons of Spanish Town. At the time we were oper­at­ing under emer­gency pow­ers , which allowed us to enter homes with­out a war­rant. A cou­ple of us entered a shack that had a sin­gle bro­ken down cot , and a, met­al cab­i­net in one cor­ner . That was the total­i­ty of the fur­nish­ings in the hum­ble one room abode. Sitting on the cot was a mid­dle-aged gen­tle­man, who was very accom­mo­dat­ing to our intru­sion and queries, I asked him if I could look at was inside the cab­i­net, he agreed. Inside the cab­i­net was a large amount of what appeared to be machine parts, I inquired of him how he came to be in pos­ses­sion of the machine parts? He told me he took them from the lead fac­to­ry in Spanish Town where he worked . I asked him “do you still work there” ? to which he replied ” no offi­cer due to the steal­ing the fac­to­ry closed down”

This prob­lem is not new , it did not start yes­ter­day, and it will not be fixed imme­di­ate­ly. The min­is­ter did exact­ly what need­ed to be done , in step­ping back , tak­ing a deep breath , with a view to com­ing up with a work­able solu­tion. Jamaica’s devel­op­ment is being ham­pered by Jamaicans , we take one step for­ward , then take two steps back­wards. Our econ­o­my, despite sneezes in the world econ­o­my , could be doing marked­ly bet­ter, we are a small coun­try of under three mil­lion peo­ple. We pro­duce food some­times more that we can con­sume , yet we choose to import the same foods , rather that teach farm­ers how to plant crops on a sched­ule to elim­i­nate glut in the mar­ket ‚as well as to ensure con­ti­nu­ity of supplies.

We Kill busi­ness peo­ple because we were told those who work hard and achieved, are evil Capitalists, whose hard-earned rewards should be tak­en away and giv­en to the poor. We spend enor­mous amounts of for­eign exchange we do not have, rather than encour­age invest­ment in solar and wind ener­gy, two com­modi­ties that are nev­er in short sup­ply in the coun­try, I could go on and on about the crime and exor­bi­tant cost of ener­gy that has all but removed Jamaica from the list of places to do busi­ness. Our peo­ple have lit­er­al­ly been reduced to a Nation of beg­gars, some choos­ing to live way above their means. How can we ever change that dichoto­my when our num­ber two for­eign exchange earn­er is remit­tance? the (largess of peo­ple liv­ing abroad).

The num­ber one earn­er tourism , is an acci­dent wait­ing to hap­pen, any upheaval could poten­tial­ly put and end to that sec­tor. What we need at this time I humbly sug­gest is a change in atti­tude, we must become patri­ot­ic Jamaicans again, unless we return to being Nationalist the destruc­tion of our coun­try will con­tin­ue. At this rate soon there will be noth­ing,.….. noth­ing except the most demon­ic of the mer­ci­less mur­der­ers , and a bar­ren waste­land of blood drenched terrain.

Mogadishu any­one?

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