Durban - Pietermaritzburg environmental advocacy organisation groundWork has welcomed the moratorium on the export of scrap metal by the government, saying it provides sufficient time for proper regulation and elimination of criminal elements in the scrap metal value chain.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition announced on Wednesday that it was imposing a six-month prohibition of export of scrap copper and ferrous metals, as part of measures to address the theft of public infrastructure for resale as scrap metal.
The department said the move had been approved by the Cabinet and was borne out of the widespread theft of public infrastructure for resale as scrap metal, causing more than R47 billion in damage annually to the country’s economy.
According to the department, new measures to be introduced in future would include prohibiting the use of cash in copper and scrap metal transactions, following legislative amendments; and limiting exports to a defined number of ports of exit.
Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan noted that cable theft had resulted in a R2bn loss in revenue for Transnet last year, while about 742km of Eskom cable had been stolen, leading to significant additional electricity disruption.
According to the government, the measures would ensure that the police can focus their enforcement resources on companies not complying with the measures, instead of spreading its valuable resources across thousands of public infrastructure sites, individual scrap yards and recyclers.
The government also hinted that it may also limit metal scrap and semi-finished exports to a limited number of ports, which would help the SA Revenue Service inspect more containers for illegal and mislabelled metal exports.
Musa Chamane of groundWork said they welcomed the ban, but stressed that the government should use the period to ensure that its monitoring mechanisms were strong enough to deal with criminal elements that had infiltrated the scrap metal trade.
“What is needed is for the monitoring and regulating arm of the government to be strengthened so that criminals no longer have control,” said Chamane.
He blamed government inefficiency for the flourishing illegal trade, which he said was tarnishing the image of honest individuals who relied on scrap metal recycling for a living.
Chamane called for an improved mechanism to provide assistance to waste pickers and recyclers.
“There must be a method in which everything is monitored so that a cable stolen from a government site does not find its way to a trader. That is why everyone in the value chain needs to be properly registered so that everything can be regulated,” he said.
The ban was also welcomed by the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), which said illegal scrap metal exports played a key role in the destruction of public infrastructure such as railway and electricity transmission cables.
The federation’s spokesperson, Trevor Shaku, noted that cable theft resulted in damage to the electrical appliances of working-class households, and contributed to rotting food in people’s refrigerators, at the time when food was expensive.
“Additionally, as demonstrated during load shedding hours, crime increases as thieves take advantage of the dark. Economically, the costs are too high. In addition to the R7bn Eskom lost in the actual theft, it was reported it costs Eskom an additional R2bn to replace stolen cables,” Shaku said.