LAGOS – The Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ISSSAN) on Tuesday urged the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to sustain its crackdown on inferior steel materials in the country.
The association’s Deputy General Secretary, Mr Adewale Okesola, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the circulation of inferior materials in the market was responsible for recurrent building collapse in the country.
“You cannot privatise a sector, and then still give waivers to importers to bring in the finished products.
“There are a lot of finished products in our companies, but no buyers; because they (people) go to the markets where they find finished products from oversea very cheap.
“They manage them and they continue using them like that. All these collapse of houses everywhere, they are just blaming the engineers for nothing.
“It is the finished products they brought in; once they are subjected to very heavy weight they will bend, then the structure collapses.“[eap_ad_2]
The scribe charged the government to focus on the agencies that aided and abetted the importation of defective materials rather than blame the nation’s building engineers.
Okesola added that the uncontrolled importation of steel had not only affected the growth of the sector but also led to the laying off of workers in the sector.
He also advised contractors and building engineers to shun such inferior materials for the safety of their clients and the citizenry as a whole.
According to him, SON needs to be sincere in its fight against inferior materials in the country while government should stop approving waivers to importers of steel.
The secretary stressed that if the country continued to depend on importation of steel, the local industry would not thrive as it should.
He added that the revival of the steel sector would be pivotal to the nation’s bid to fully industrialise. (NAN)[eap_ad_3]
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