A consumer advocacy group asked the Trade Department to investigate the alleged proliferation of substandard imported cement at local hardware stores.
The National Coalition of Filipino Consumers said it submitted pieces of evidence to the Bureau of Product Standards showing that expired, mislabeled and unlabeled cement was being sold and used in several provinces and parts of Metro Manila.
It submitted proofs like photos of the questionable products and purchase receipts as evidence.
Coalition spokesperson and legal counsel Oliver San Antonio said the group conducted initial investigations and test buys after receiving reports that substandard cement was being sold in areas like La Union, Davao and Caloocan City.
“We received initial reports from consumers that expired imported cement was being openly sold in the marketplace, so we conducted our own investigations. The reports turned out to be true,” San Antonio said.
“We were actually able to buy expired cement in La Union and in Davao, and that’s just an initial sampling. We’re sure there are more substandard cement in other parts of the country being offered to unsuspecting consumers,” he said.
The consumer group said “old cement” was not setting well and was likely to fail compression tests that aimed to check whether a product was still in prime condition.
San Antonio said the group had purchase receipts and photos of hardware stores and public works projects using old, mislabeled and substandard cement.
“When we inspected the construction site of a Caloocan City high school in early August, we saw hundreds of cement bags, labelled with the Buffalo Cement brand from Vietnam, being used to build a four-story structure,” he said.
The group said that based on data it collated, the labels of questionable products had a manufacturing date of December 2016. It said this meant the products were about nine months old already and were in violation of the maximum six-month shelf life imposed by the Trade Department.
According to the Philippine National Standard (PNS) 07:2005, “cement remaining in bulk storage at the plant/storage silo prior to shipment for more than six months, or cement in bags in local storage in the hands of a vendor for more than three months, needs to be retested.”
San Antonio said the same “expired” Buffalo brand of cement was also being sold in La Union when the group went to check consumer complaints earlier this month.