I THINK public defender Earl Witter has missed the point about the shutting down of the scrap metal trade. He is concerned that the rights of the scrap metal gatherers, dealers and exporters to earn a living may have been infringed by a stroke of the minister's pen. He does not condone the theft of railway lines, electricity wires, bridge rails, cultural artefacts, house gates and the like (he thinks persons who do this have "a disease of the mind"); his concern is "the honest dealer, gatherer, and honest exporter who plays by the rules ... may have been, by this act of the minister, shafted".
The main issue, Mr Witter, is not the honesty or criminal behaviour of many of the scrap metal operators, but the unsustainability of the scrap metal trade. If unscrupulous persons had not been ripping off public and private property, the industry would have been forced to shut down long ago, because it would have run out of scrap metal to export.
The gathering, compressing and exporting of scrap metal is not a typical business enterprise; it has more in common with fishing than with manufacturing. A manufacturer sources his raw materials on the open market and processes it to produce his product; he can increase production at any time by sourcing more raw materials on the open market, and increasing his staff. A fisherman has to chase down his fish in the open sea; he can only catch them if mother fish lay enough eggs to hatch, and after bigger fish have had their fill; you cannot fish harder to increase fish production beyond a certain point, after which the catch will decline (you will now be catching and killing the mother fish). You cannot catch more fish than are hatched without a decline in fish stocks (overfishing).
(Once the backlog of scrap build-up has been taken off) you cannot export more scrap metal than is generated without cannibalising non-scrap metal. The industry had expanded on the fat of the backlog of scrap build-up and long ago had become unsustainable. It does not have a "right" to exist if there is no more legitimate scrap to export.
What I would encourage Mr Witter to do is to explore a little more the concept of sustainable development. Although most governments have signed United Nations treaties committing their nations to pursue it, and have national policy documents prescribing that government departments must encourage it, few seem to understand it. In their election manifestos political parties will declare their undying support of sustainable development, and then afterwards descend into opportunism and expedience, approving the destruction of wetlands, forests, fragile coral cay ecosystems and the like in the name of progress and (what is definitely unsustainable) "development".
Vandalism, Mr Witter, has forced our present government to take the right decision in this case, in support of sustainable development. Please do not do anything to threaten their one claim to sustainable behaviour.
Capital punishment
You can tell we are fully in the silly season; several voices from within the government are raised in concert calling for the resumption of hanging. When you are in opposition and you call for hanging, you are harassing the government; when you are in government and you call for hanging, who are you harassing? The human rights groups?
It is naked populism!
Opinion polls show that most Jamaicans support capital punishment, and flogging; and the frequency with which our countrymen lynch and chop up goat thieves and homosexuals is a sure sign of where our moral compass lies.
The recent beheadings have led to public outrage, and the latest calls for hangings to resume; I wonder if the perpetrators of the beheadings were identified and caught by a Jamaican mob, whether they would not chop them up and behead them to show their disapproval of the beheadings? What an irony!
If we want to detect and apprehend more murderers, we must first increase the level of education and training within our police force, certainly among the homicide detectives. And we must further increase our investment in forensic science and technology available to our crime fighters.
And the Jamaica Labour Party and the People's National Party must not just disassociate themselves from their gangs with their gunmen and beheaders, but must turn them in, and bring in the guns. There is too much hypocrisy in Jamaican politics.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.
August 5, 2011
jamaica-gleaner
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Showing posts with label Scrap metal Jamaica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scrap metal Jamaica. Show all posts
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Jamaica... Scrap metal ban: a concession to disorder
jamaica-gleaner editorial
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.
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.
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.
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.
July 28, 2011
jamaica-gleaner editorial
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.
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.
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.
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.
July 28, 2011
jamaica-gleaner editorial
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