A REPORT commissioned by the Government has confirmed that more than the 500 tonnes of poorly manufactured cement was sold by Caribbean Cement Company Ltd., (CCCL) and that the difference was not subject to the company's March recall.
The report, produced by a committee chaired by George Blankson of the University of Technology (UTech), also revealed that declining quality standard began to appear as far back as a year ago, but that the company's management failed to take action.
"The evidence showed that the root cause for the production of non-conforming cement was the failure of the management of CCCL to take effective action to correct the declining trends in production process indicators parameters that were evident from as far as June 2005," said an executive summary of the report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday by Philip Paulwell, Minister of Industry, Technology, Energy and Commerce.
DANGEROUS IN BUILDINGS
Carib Cement, a subsidiary of Trinidad Cement Ltd., announced the recall of 500 tonnes of Portland cement on March 2 in the face of complaints in the construction sector that the product hardened prematurely and was dangerous in buildings.
But although the document laid by Paulwell did not say by how much, it indicated that the poor quality cement that reached the market was more than had been indicated by CCCL - a claim previously made by the Opposition and some construction industry officials.
"The data show that non-conforming cement was produced and distributed before and after the dates claimed by CCCL," the report said. "These batches of non-conforming cement were not included in the CCCL recall."
Although the indication of declining standards began to emerge a year ago, matters started to turn critical in January of this year and continued through March, with no effort at "effective corrective action" by the company's managers. "In addition, when mill temperatures were significantly above the maximum allowable on February 20, 2006, no effective action was taken for several hours."
While the report blasted managers of Carib Cement, which at the time had only a partially completed quality manual as part of a move to an ISO 9001 standard that started in 2004, it did not completely vindicate the Bureau of Standards.
"External to the plant operations, the Bureau of Standards did not have an adequate programme in place for the effective monitoring of cement," it said.
