With just weeks to go before the elections, President Bharrat Jagdeo’s decision to release for export 132 scrap metal containers, which were held up earlier in the year, amounts to “rank opportunism,” says AFC presidential candidate Khemraj Ramjattan.
According to Ramjattan, it is “quite amusing” that with elections looming, Jagdeo has now decided to heed its advice given four months ago to release the containers. “This is tantamount to rank political opportunism with total disregard for the intelligence of the Guyanese people,” he was quoted as saying in a party press release.
The AFC also recalled that on July 8, it had picketed the Office of the Prime Minister to register its disapproval and grave concern about government’s ill-advised handling of thescrap metal workers and dealers’ plight. It had said then that the Guyana Metal Recyclers’ Association was willing to cooperate with the Guyana Police Force in arresting and prosecuting those who ply the illegal non-ferrous metal trade as well as those who encourage and participate in the vandalism of public and private property in order to obtain ferrous scraps. The party also recalled that it had recommended that upon a thorough inspection of the containers for non-ferrous metals, they should be released forthwith.
The AFC also said that in 2010, local scrap metal dealers who are members of the Guyana Scrap Metal Dealers Association had asked the Ministry of Commerce to properly account for a sum nearing US$1M it reportedly paid to it, over a period of time, to finance a monitoring unit to inspect scrap metal prior to export. “The monitoring unit never functioned and so the unscrupulous were allowed to continue their nefarious activities while the genuine metal workers and dealers were left to suffer losses amounting to millions of dollars,” the AFC said.
