More pressure on NCRA to address poor-quality building blocks
Published:Wednesday | January 4, 2023 | 11:12 AM
The Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) is calling for the intervention of Industry Minister Aubyn Hill as a government regulator remains silent on what it has done with information received last July identifying dozens of producers of substandard building blocks.
A Sunday Gleaner probe last month brought to light an internal assessment at the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority (NCRA) which called for “urgent attention” to the situation of manufacturers selling blocks that did not meet the minimum requirement for bearing load.
READ: Poor-quality building blocks
The Lorice Edwards Brown-led NCRA is yet to answer questions submitted on December 13 last year on what the agency has done with the information.
The Bureau of Standards (BSJ), which received questions on the same date, replied, albeit pushing some queries to the NCRA.
JMEA president John Mahfood says the NCRA's non-response is a problem and the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce should now step in to address the public.
“That is a big concern; they're not responding in the public domain to say what is the situation and what are they going to do about it,” said Mahfood of the NCRA, which is formerly the regulatory division of the BSJ.
He said the issues raised require an approach that considers the training of block makers.
“Encourage block makers that if this is a long-term plan of theirs to get into this business, they will only survive if they have the certification and the training and they can assure their customers,” added the businessman who is the chief executive officer of Jamaican Teas Limited.
Mahfood, whose company is building a 30-apartment complex, also noted that for some months in 2022 there was a shortage of cement and building blocks which put some developers “under pressure” as construction work had to be halted.
He said under those circumstances small operators may have sprung up but it would be unlikely that the developers of large properties would be targeted since their demands are greater and would outstrip the capacity of small producers.
“Where I think the bigger risk is, is small individuals who are building a small house or an addition or an improvement where they might be tempted to buy from the more informal companies that haven't been bureau certified and who are concerned about cost and availability,” Mahfood added.
A senior ministry official said a meeting involving the minister was held last week on the matter, and that a statement would be released “soon”.
The NCRA's internal assessment examined samples of concrete hollow blocks for the period February to June 2022.
It was finalised in July of that year.
From a total of 136 samples taken from 109 block manufacturers across 12 parishes, only 59 samples met the required minimum compressive strength, returning a non-compliance level of 57 per cent.
The blocks were tested for physical characteristics such as length and height, and compressive strength, based on the Jamaican Standard Specification for hollow concrete blocks (JS 35).
Block makers who meet the standard are issued with one-year registration certificates.
The compressive strength, according to the document in the possession of several ministry officials, is the most important standard for determining a block's ability to bear load or “to support overlying parts of a building or structure”.
The acceptable compressive strength has been determined to be the minimum average of 10 units of blocks, with a minimum compressive strength of seven Mega Pascals (MPa), a basic unit of pressure or tension measurement.
The 77 samples that did not meet the standard did not have the required compressive strength of seven MPa, the amount of strength needed to bear load.
“The results clearly demonstrate that a 57 per cent non-compliance level of hollow concrete blocks throughout 12 parishes over the period requires urgent attention,” concluded the analysis, which added that “a significant number of the compressive strength results were less than five MPa”.
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