Even as the Ministry of Business says it is continuing to create a reformed set of operational regulations for the scrap metal industry, the umbrella association for operators in the sector feels that the treatment that has been meted out to the industry gives rise to the view that it has now come to be regarded as a pariah.
“We have become a soft target. Whatever rules may have been broken in any other industry, gold, for example, there would have between no question of the businesses in that sector being prevented from earning a living for more than a year,” Secretary of the Guyana Scrap Metal Dealers Association (GSMDA) Michael Benjamin told Stabroek Business.
“This demands and emergency intervention by the President. They are demonizing a legitimate industry,” a visibly distressed Benjamin said on Wednesday.