THE CARIBBEAN Cement Company (CCC), in press advertisements yesterday, said it expects to complete investigations into a breach of quality standards at its Rockfort plant by today.
With due respect to the company and its principals, an independent probe is required to enlighten the public as to exactly what is at the bottom of this breach that is emerging as a major crisis in the building industry.
The news coming out of the local building industry over the past few weeks indicates that the country has yet to realise the full impact of the release of several batches of faulty cement to the trade over the past six months.
While the CCC has already recalled more than 500 tonnes of cement manufactured between February 19-27 this year, builders in the trade are claiming to have seen and reported faults from as far back as October last year.
So the industry is now faced with millions of dollars in losses as several construction projects have either been halted as more checks are done on the cement they purchased, or units which were partially completed have had to be demolished because of the evidence of the use of a sub-standard product.
There are several disturbing aspects to this development, not the least of which is the seeming inertia of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) in responding to initial complaints from consumers. It is especially crucial that the BSJ play an aggressively vigilant role in ensuring that the consumer is protected when the product is manufactured by a monopoly entity.
Jamaica's construction industry has earned a reputation of erecting buildings to required specifications to withstand earthquakes and hurricane force winds of certain magnitudes. We cannot afford for these standards to be compromised, whether through negligence or sabotage.
The public needs to know where the breakdown occurred in the manufacturing process to allow faulty products to be used in producing the cement. The public also needs to know how and under what circumstances the Caribbean Cement Company's internal systems went awry to the extent they appear to have, so as to release to the trade one or several bad batches of cement.
Clearly too, the issue of compensation will have to be addressed and quickly. We hardly expect that contractors working on large projects and small householders doing extensions to their houses will absorb the additional costs which do not stem from any error on their part.
Whatever confidence the Ministry of Commerce has in the integrity of the CCC's investigations, the public needs to be assured that a proper probe is being done to prevent a recurrence.
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