Editorial | Make the NCRA independent

It is timely for Aubyn Hill, the commerce minister, to do what is necessary to launch the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority (NCRA) as a fully independent and legally autonomous body, and insist that the agency gets on with the job of holding errant suppliers of goods and services to account. Seven years in statutory limbo, as a partially stand-alone institution, is long enough.

This attention to the status of the NRCA was triggered by this newspaper’s report on Christmas Day of the authority’s finding that most of the manufacturers of hollow concrete blocks in Jamaica do not meet basic quality standards. The Gleaner report also noted the NCRA’s apparent slowness in enforcing the regulations. The below-par manufacturers, it seems, are still operating.

There are two reasons – apart from the safety concerns that arise from building homes and other edifices with substandard blocks – why this revelation is disturbing. First, it is not the first time the question of substandard concrete blocks has gained national attention. Second, the decoupling of the NCRA from the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) was, in part, to give it greater agency and authority to ensure regulatory compliance.

In 2015, the year before the BSJ’s regulatory arm was spun off to become the NCRA – bringing Jamaica in compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) stipulations – the bureau, in a review of 200 block manufacturers, found that the products of eight of 10 of them did not meet its quality standards. Later that year, the substandard manufacturers had declined to 63 per cent. Even at that, only 37 per cent made blocks the BSJ deemed fit for use in construction.

INFERIOR PRODUCTS

Seven years later, The Gleaner’s reporting discovered, only 43 per cent of the products of 109 manufacturers tested by the NCRA were compliant with new standards set by the BSJ last year. Put differently, 57 per cent did not meet the mark.

Hollow concrete blocks are supposed to have a minimum compressive strength of seven megapascals (over 1,000 pounds per square inch). However, the NCRA’s analysts found that “a significant number of the compressive strength results were less than five” megapascals – at least 29 per cent below the specified strength.

Curiously, the NCRA’s leadership, up to the time of the publication of The Gleaner’s findings, and afterwards, had not responded to the newspaper’s questions on what the agency intended to do about the findings.

It may be that the NCRA’s bosses were just too busy in December to pay attention to the questions. For the answers to what was asked ought not to be secret information.

The NCRA’s job is to protect the health and safety of Jamaicans from the dangers of inferior products. Blocks that fail to meet the minimum compressive strength required for this category of building products pose a danger to society.

CLARIFY AND REGULARISE STATUS

Buildings constructed with them may not immediately fall apart. They may survive for decades. However, subject to the right amount of pressure, they will crumble – an important consideration in a country susceptible to earthquakes and other catastrophes.

That is why Minister Hill should intervene to have the NCRA assure Jamaicans that it is acting on their behalf, and in their best interest, in this matter. And in any other matter relating to product safety and quality compliance.

Further, Mr Hill should have the NCRA’s status fully clarified and regularised.

Insofar as this newspaper is aware, the agency operates on a quasi-independent basis, based on a 2015 decision by the Cabinet that the BSJ’s regulatory unit be a separate body, although the two would share back-office services.

We have found no evidence that the NCRA’s independence has been rooted in legislation, to make it a body corporate with a distinct legal personality, as is the case with the BSJ. If that is indeed the case, the matter must be rectified – quickly.

Minister Hill should also have written into the law the NCRA’s obligation to publish the findings of its analyses and reviews of products, so that consumers have information to help them in protecting their health and safety.

Transparency is good. Someone should tell the honchos of the NCRA.