COMMERCE MINISTER Phillip Paulwell announced yesterday that more batches of cement have been recalled and systems are currently being implemented to ensure that customers affected by last month's distribution of faulty product were properly compensated.
Minister Paulwell was responding to queries from Opposition Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, who raised the matter during a parliamentary debate to approve $37 billion to carry out budgetary requirements during the four months before the expected approval of the 2006/2007 Budget in July.
Mr. Shaw raised the issue, which Minister Paulwell said he had intended to address later during yesterday's sitting of the House of Representatives, through reference to the building of schools and the budgetary allocation to the Education Ministry.
INVESTIGATION INDICATIONS
The Commerce Minister, in a fulsome presentation on the recent distribution of faulty cement, told the House that investigations by the Bureau of Standards had indicated that the faulty batches were included in 500 tonnes of the product bagged and supplied to the public by Caribbean Cement Company Ltd. between February 23 and 25.
"What we have instructed the cement company today to do is to withdraw all of that production," Mr. Paulwell told the House. "Those persons who use (tainted) cement, and we now are putting in place a system to do the proper checks to make sure that claims can be verified, they will be fully compensated by the cement company."
However, Opposition members were dissatisfied with the Commerce Minister's first comments to Parliament since the current cement crisis came to public attention. Last week, Mr. Paulwell announced at a press briefing that the Government would reduce a 40 per cent tariff on imported cement which had been introduced, despite the disapproval of the Opposition, to protect the local cement company from competition.
