Sri Lanka’s leading cement maker, Holcim (Lanka) Ltd has urged the authorities to take action to stop imports of poor quality cement especially in view of the government development plans.
In a letter to Kanchana Ratwatte, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Standard Institution (SLSI), Holcim Chairman Manilal Fernando suggesting a few steps in barring substandard imports. They are:
- Granting approval for overseas cement sources under the import inspection scheme,
- Granting SLS mark for imported brands in bag form and for overseas plants,
- Sampling, quality testing and release of shipments
- Variation of quality from shipment to shipment of each brand (co-efficient of variation of cement with time)
- Customer feed-back and complaints from the market.
Referring to the country’s post-war development plans, Mr Fernando said the government’s objective in the next 10 years is to transform the country as a strategically important economic centre of the world.
And for all this and with a construction boom in the next 5-10 years, he said the cement industry has to be ready and geared for this. He said the quality of such constructions will depend on the quality of cement available in the market.
“As we understand recently SLSI has found continuous quality deviation of some imported cements and has taken timely and appropriate actions to stop these sources and prevented the release of such cement to the market. We as a leading cement supplier appreciate this action towards safeguarding the local consumer and support SLSI for maintaining the quality of cement supplied to the market including cement produced by us,” he added.
The Holcim chief noted that that SLSI needs to reinforce its policies and regulations across the entire cement industry to protect the local consumer and establish appropriate quality control measures especially for imported cement. |
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