A group of iron and steel manufacturers said Thursday it filed graft charges against two Trade officials for allowing the shipment of P95 million worth of Chinese steel bars despite the lack of permit.
The Philippine Iron and Steel Institute said it filed a case before the Office of the Ombudsman to prevent the release of the shipment to the local steel market and protect consumers from buying unsafe and substandard steel.
Pisi president Roberto Cola said in a statement there was ground to hold Bureau of Product Standards director-in-charge Ann Claire Cabochan and the Trade Department’s Zambales provincial director Leonila Baluyut “criminally liable.”
Cola said Cabochan and Baluyut issued an unauthorized provisional import clearance certificate that abetted the release of some 5,000 metric tons of deformed steel bars imported in mid-April by Mannage Resources Trading Corp. without first subjecting the shipment to thorough tests and industry-accepted safety standards.
Cola said at least 250 pieces of steel bars should have been used for sampling, yet only three were tested. Testing was also done without experts from the Federation of Philippine Industries and the Bureau of Customs, he said.
Cola said the issuance of provisional ICCs with just cursory safety tests “pose a grave danger to the safety of the public”.
It further “creates heightened and increased risk in opening the market to the entry of substandard products which endanger lives even before they are subjected to inspection and testing,” he said.
He said Mannage’s shipment, being steel bars, were “indispensable structural components of buildings, houses and other infrastructure projects. If substandard steel bars are used for construction, there is extreme and grave danger to many lives.”
Cola also said Cabochan and Baluyut “bestowed undue advantage to importers such as Mannage,” which did not have to comply with the same stringent rules that local producers had to comply with.
Baluyut and Cabochan “manifested conscious indifference to the consequences of their actions to the government, the public, the safety of the end user and consumers, and even to local producers or manufacturers,” according to Cola.
Pisi earlier claimed that Mannage lacked the authority to bring in steel bars, as it was an importer and seller of “mostly food delicacies”.