Kevon Felmine

With many hard­ware deal­ers now im­port­ing cheap Chi­nese steel prod­ucts, the Steel Work­ers Union (SWUTT) is warn­ing Gov­ern­ment and con­trac­tors that in­fra­struc­ture in T&T will not be able to stand nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in the near fu­ture.

Dozens of re­trenched work­ers of Cen­tral Trinidad Steel Ltd (Cen­trin), T&T's lead­ing sup­pli­er of steel prod­ucts, protest­ed in front of the com­pa­ny's Point Lisas plant yes­ter­day.

SWUTT gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lancelot Smart said the fall­out from the plant's shut­down ear­li­er this month has led many hard­ware deal­ers to im­port cheap and low grade Chi­nese prod­ucts, which have been flood­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day, he said a lead­ing hard­ware sup­pli­er was now im­port­ing the same cheap steel prod­ucts.

He called on the Bu­reau of Stan­dards to con­duct mill tests on the prod­ucts be­ing sold by the deal­ers, es­pe­cial­ly for Gov­ern­ment con­tracts. He said steel buy­ers need to be aware that their prod­ucts can­not be is­sued qual­i­ty as­sur­ances.

He added: "We had a meet­ing with Cen­trin some time last year when they asked us to give what­ev­er as­sis­tance we can by speak­ing to our af­fil­i­ates and if pos­si­ble, by speak­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to see what they can do about hard­ware deal­ers bring­ing in steel from Chi­na.

Of course with hard­ware deal­ers bring­ing in their own steel, it ham­pered Cen­trin's abil­i­ty to sell.

"In our ef­forts, they came and laid off the work­ers and are do­ing the same things they had asked the Gov­ern­ment to stop oth­er peo­ple from do­ing.

"We will be very care­ful to ad­vise that these steels are in­fe­ri­or with­out it be­ing test­ed. What we want to ad­vise is that the Bu­reau of Stan­dards get in­volved and do test­ing and these im­port­ed steel," Smart said.

Branch pres­i­dents Ricky Ram­doolar said while the Chi­nese and Turk­ish prod­ucts were cheap­er to im­port than the cost of man­u­fac­tur­ing the lo­cal items, they did not pass the qual­i­ty stan­dard test.

Shop stew­ard Luke Balchan said if hard­ware deal­ers were to pur­chase qual­i­ty steel like Cen­trin's prod­ucts, it would cost them more. He said they were al­so sell­ing the cheap prod­uct at the same price as qual­i­ty prod­ucts.

Cen­trin's woes

Cen­trin pro­duced roof­ing sheets, Z purlins and C purlins, deck­ing sheets, BRC wire, weld­ed wire mesh, chain link wire, re­bars, rounds and High Ten­sile De­formed Re­in­forc­ing Bars.

The com­pa­ny's op­er­a­tion was halt­ed due to Arcelor­Mit­tal's plant be­ing shut­down last year. Cen­trin re­lies on Arcelor­Mit­tal's Di­rect Re­duced Iron (DRI) bil­lets to make its prod­ucts. This led to Cen­trin is­su­ing re­trench­ment no­tices to 200 em­ploy­ees on Jan­u­ary 11.

Smart said while the union un­der­stood Cen­trin's prob­lem, the com­pa­ny had re­fused to meet with them to dis­cuss a so­lu­tion.

He said they were propos­ing that the 60 unionised em­ploy­ees at the com­pa­ny be ab­sorbed in­to Bhag­wans­ingh's Hard­ware, Cen­trin's par­ent com­pa­ny.

No clear di­rec­tives for Arcelor­Mit­tal work­ers

Al­though Arcelor­Mit­tal work­ers re­turned to the Point Lisas plant on Jan­u­ary 18 af­ter be­ing laid off dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, they were in­formed that work­ers would un­der­go ori­en­ta­tion and health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­ment train­ing for eight days.

He said work­ers were still en­gaged in train­ing and the union was un­aware what the com­pa­ny was do­ing with the plant.

He added: "We have tak­en the lay off mat­ter to court and in the case man­age­ment con­fer­ence, the pres­i­dent of the court had asked that the sta­tus quo re­mained, mean­ing that what­ev­er was said in those lay­ing off let­ters should be re­mained un­til the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of that mat­ter at the court.

"That is that the work­ers would have re­turned to work on the 18. The fi­nal sub­mis­sions were made at the court yes­ter­day and judg­ment has been re­served."