The Upper West regional manager for cement manufacturing company, Ghacem, Mr. Brian Sotaa Seidu has commended the Ghana Standards Authority for clamping down on companies engaged in the manufacturing and distribution of substandard cement in Ghana.
Speaking to Tinus Tuozie on Hope News Central, he said it's refreshing for the Ghana Standards Authority to take such stringent measures against companies not complying with the standards that have been set by the regulator.
' This isn't the first time the Ghana Standards Authority have engaged in monitoring cement. It's just that this is the first time they have put the information in the public domain. For us at Ghacem if they do the monitoring on a daily basis we would be appreciative'. He said.
Mr. Brian Sotaa Seidu further suggested that, due to financial difficulties, some cement users go in for various inferior cement brands because they are relatively cheaper than the tried and tested brands. ' It's better to use quality cement to build once and for all rather than having to renovate often or even have the building collapse due to the use of inferior cement '.
The Upper West regional Ghacem manager further called on retailers of cement to be wary of the kinds of brands they deal with. He admonished them to crosscheck as to whether those brands are approved by the Ghana Standards Authority. This he believes.
It has become common place in Ghana for buildings to collapse whiles still under construction. This many experts believe has always been as a result of using inferior building materials.
The Ghana Standards Authority recently during its testing of the efficacy of cement in some factories had three of them shut down. The companies include Safe cement Ghana Ltd, Unicem cement Ltd and Kumasi cement Ltd.