00:00the emergency meeting held in san fernando brought together major exporters and yard
00:05owners from across trinidad that's according to president of the tnt scrap iron dealers association
00:11alan ferguson they had yards from different areas from up to point 40 and they had placed um
00:19so corners they had more than one yard from super honest claxon bay and different areas
00:25action in that and tobago all penal db so the thing was it was okay it was okay for us
00:33i mean
00:34we take a little while to come up with a plan but we did come up with the plan and
00:39we will announce
00:40the plan tomorrow what we decide to do it comes amid a deep fear by industry operators that rampant
00:47copper theft could push the government to enforce a total operational ban a move they say would
00:52instantly throw thousands of ordinary citizens out of work while ttcda is holding back on the
00:59full details of the strategy at this time it has confirmed that a ban on copper it proposed as a
01:05temporary resolve to curb the problem has been put on hold we didn't agree to for the government to
01:12ban the industry for the copper industry we didn't agree on that um so we uh we work around it
01:19and we
01:19work on something that we got able to to try to do certain things to able to try to stop
01:25the theft
01:26from taking place ferguson has also confirmed that a strict price cap on copper has been agreed upon
01:32to discourage illegal trading but exactly what that is is also said to be revealed yes that was discussed
01:40and we uh we we discussed that the cap on the copper and we are agreed on our price too
01:46the anxiety in
01:47the meeting room was driven by the harrowing memory of the previous industry shutdown in 2022 association
01:54members have made it clear that keeping yards open is vital for protecting the livelihoods of thousands
02:00of low-income workers everybody had that sentiment is that they don't want the whole industry to shut down
02:08and they don't want the industry to shut down because remember when the industry shut down a lot of people
02:13workers will be out of work and they have a lot of clothes up in place ttcda plans to provide
02:19more
02:19information on the devised plan stemming from the emergency meeting at a press conference on wednesday
02:25at a press conference on wednesday alicia boucher tv6 news
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