Dawn RitchTHE CARIB Cement Company, like every other institution in Jamaica, is but a shadow of its former self. But nobody in the trade can remember them carpeting the country before with rotten cement.
Carib Cement became a publicly listed government-owned company which lost money. Before that it was a privately-owned Jamaican company that made money. Dr. Omar Davies Finance Minister decided to divest it, along with Jamaica Public Service, and a lot of other Jamaican assets that he merely melted down like so much gold ingot and sold exclusively to foreigners on the cheap. All this and more to fund the Government's recurrent expenditure.
Let the record show that no Jamaican investor was good enough for Dr. Davies. The island's strategic industries and services were sold to foreigners, mainly bumptious Trinidadians. The commanding heights of the economy, previously controlled by private Jamaicans and only after decades of struggle and indignities, were taken away from them by Dr. Davies' disastrous decade of financial policies which caused extensive business failure and debt.
He taunted Jamaican entrepreneurs from the television cameras saying "... only people with deep pockets, who are fit and proper persons' need bother apply for any government divestment in any sector. It was clear that Jamaicans not genetically linked to the People's National Party, were being excluded from that list. And so it was to prove.
Trinidadians bought Carib Cement a few years ago, and for the first time in our history the company distributed 500 metric tonnes of rotten cement islandwide. Some buildings have already had to be demolished.
To hear a Trinidadian accent on radio, belonging to the Carib Cement general manager, talking about 'cee-ment' in an emotionless tone, was to conjure up the image of all building stock over the last two years crumbling into dust around us. The new highway, the Riu and Fiesta hotels which would be better used as housing stock for hotel workers if they don't crumble, and of course the World Cup Cricket stadiums under construction in Kingston and Trelawny. That would cause a great big dust up indeed.
PROPOSED PRICE INCREASE
The one thing Jamaica hasn't done since the 1692 earthquake is crumble. Even in the 1907 earthquake the greatest damage was caused by fire. For 500 years Jamaicans knew how to build things, and for nearly a hundred years we had our own cement factory which produced world class cement from local gypsum and aggregates. That record was destroyed forever by the admission by the new Trinidadian owners of the company, that they have sold us rotten cement. And this only after they announced a proposed price increase of 12 1/2 per cent. This is adding insult to injury to the Jamaican people.
The insult began first with Omar Davies, who gave away the country's patrimony to foreigners, and disenfranchised the citizenry of this country from ownership for purely spurious reasons. No Jamaican ever made or sold rotten cement. The quality of our cement used to be something we could count on in Jamaica. Now we can't even count on that any more.
The only saving grace, and we will never know for sure, is that no Jamaican may have made that rotten cement. Carib Cement imports cement from Cuba, and doesn't clearly identify in its bagging between imported and domestic cement. They can know what caused the rottenness, but not where or when.
Dr. Davies ran a failing political campaign of 'world class' because he wasn't the genuine article. He demonstrated that by selling our light and power company to a bankrupt United States Company Mirant, and our monopoly cement installation to a bunch of Trinidadians who sold us rotten cement. Whatever happened to the proper due diligence that the Finance Minister promised us so many years ago, when he contemptuously excluded Jamaicans from participating in any divestment?
The cost of electricity is so far through the roof that people kill themselves to try to steal it. The rest of us are afraid to open the bill when it comes. Now the cement company doesn't know whose cement it is, or who they sold it to.
HARD CURRENCY PROFITS
That has been the story of this administration. They have problems with everything they touch. They have ruined the reputation of both the Jamaica Public Service and Carib Cement, while these companies remit burgeoning hard currency profits abroad. They have made the light bulb and a sound structure a luxury.
If this administration found they could not run large companies well because of genetically-connected persons on the board, then the sensible thing to have done was appoint competent boards. Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga ran a competent government in the 1980s because that is what he did. It was no secret.
But no, this Government had to select people for tasks based purely on the partisan and the personal. Then finding themselves failing they turn around and sell the country's best assets at give-away prices to selected overseas companies unable to manage them.
Nobody buying any building in Jamaica constructed in the last few years should therefore do so without a structural engineer's report on it. Every contract should have a provision requiring this report, and giving the purchaser the option to cancel if it's negative. These reports should be at the expense of Carib Cement.
The new owners gave the Government repeated assurances when they sought tariff protection against 'dumped' cement from Thailand, China and Indonesia that they could supply a quality product in sufficient quantities for local demand. Now we find that they can do neither. This is hardly sound corporate responsibility, much less fair competition.
In its defence the company says it didn't bank on heavy rains, an industrial strike, and that domestic demand would grow so. Well, this is Jamaica, not Trinidad. It rains in Jamaica, people go on strike, and our demand for cement will always grow. They should return the company to us because they've made a nonsense of it.
