Scrap dealers want ban on exportation reviewed

Scrap dealers in the Ashanti Region are calling on government to review the ban on the exportation of ferrous scrap metals – as the recent introduction of the law prohibiting the exportation of metals is said to be adversely affecting the scrap business in the Region.

It would be recalled that the Parliament of Ghana on 25^th of March this year, passed a law to ban the exportation of scrap metals aimed to protect the local steel manufacturing industries and prevent its collapse. The passage of the law thus joins Ghana to other nations in the sub-region that have taken steps to come out with legislations to make it an offence to export ferrous metals.

However, Abdalah Alhassan, Chairman of the Inside Scrap dealers at Akwetia Line in Kumasi maintains that, since the coming into force of this law, scores of people in the scrap trade have been forced out of business. He attributed the situation to the inability to recover the huge sums of monies spent on buying the metals and on transport, largely as a result of the unfavorable business conditions of the local steel manufacturing industries.

He lamented that the local buyers take advantage to select the types of metals they need and reject the rest unlike their foreign patrons regardless of the price at which they buy the metals.  This situation, he said, is said crippling the scrap dealers financially and thus depriving them of their only source of livelihood as they are now being compelled to retire from the business.

In addition to this, the chairman also indicated that the recent fuel hikes have also worsen their plight as they are now compelled to pay exorbitant transport fares to cart the metals to the country’s industrial hub where the local market is based.

‘’We are making unreasonable losses day in and out, and unfortunately very little has been heard from government on the situation. Although, we don’t to say the government is insensitive to our plight, we still appeal to them to reconsider this decision,’’ he added.

A visit to some areas where the scrap dealers operate at Akwetia Line close to the Ashanti Regional office of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) revealed several numbers of young men who are said to engage in this trade loitering around with less work to do. 

Some of the scrape dealers expressed fears that, some of their colleagues who livelihoods are now at stake might resort to other vices to able to feed themselves.