The Philippine Iron and Steel Institute wants to create a partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry to stop local hardware stores from selling substandard steel and prevent the proliferation of inferior reinforcing steel bars.
The group proposed to help the Bureau of Fair Trade Enforcement in conducting a nationwide market monitoring and standards enforcement campaign.
The group also offered to assist market monitoring teams to conduct an actual weighing and measuring of bars to determine conformance to PNS 49:2002 and PNS 211:2002.
It volunteered to file cases against hardware store owners and local manufacturers violating product standard laws and practicing unfair trade.
The Pisi recently conducted a two-day market test-buy activity.
Test samples were cut from the purchased rebars and submitted to the Metals Industry Research and Development Center for third party testing.