BCPG urges CEMAN to stop illegal re-bagging of cement

The Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (CEMAN) has been called upon to work with its members and stop the illegal re-bagging of cement.

The Building Collapse Prevention Guild, in a letter dated July 2, 2015 and signed by its President, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, urged CEMAN to hold regular forum for cement distributors and retailers, where the implications of re-bagging of cement should be discussed in order to discourage the sharp practice.

The letter read in part, “The essence of packaging cement at 50kg quantity per bag is to ensure consistency in mix ratio on site. However, when such quantity is deliberately reduced by some dubious cement distributors and retailers actuated by profiteering, structural defects in building become imminent.

“The sharp practice of cement quantity depletion is prevalent in the building material markets in Nigeria, especially in Abuja and Port Harcourt. It is unfortunate that this illegal practice has been in existence for long without serious efforts to checkmate it. And it remains a big headache for construction practitioners.”

According to the BCPG, head pans are the common gauge for batching aggregates and cement on sites and are designed to conveniently contain 25kg of cement, adding that for ease of transportation and lifting, a bag of cement was limited in weight to 50kg, that is, two head pans by volume.

The guild noted that the gauge became the basis for determining the quantity of the aggregates in a specific mix.

It added, “For instance, a mix ratio of 1:2:4, which is traditionally expected to attain a strength of 20N/mm2 at 28 days, the translation into practice is one head pan of cement (i.e. half a bag of cement) will be added to two head pans of fine aggregate such as sharp sand and four head pans of coarse aggregate that could be clean gravel or granite.

Then water of appropriate proportion is used to mix the cement and the aggregates together in a workability and compaction that will eventuate in the required strength at 28 days.

“However, a reduction in the quantity of cement contained in a standard bag, which might not be easily noticeable, constitutes a serious danger to the overall strength of a concrete. The same is applicable to cement-sand ratio in screeding, rendering and block moulding.”

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The BCPG noted that it would only take a careful observation by a professional to identify a slightly depleted bag of cement, adding that only an experienced ganger or labourer could sense a weight difference in a full cement bag and the re-bagged one that had been carefully opened, depleted and resewn.

“The most effective way of checking the weight of cement supplied to a site in order to separate the chaff from the grain is to place each bag on a weighing machine. This is cumbersome and impracticable. Hence, it is more realistic to control the illegal practice from the source,” the letter read in part.

The guild said that based on its investigation, competition and greed within the circles of some cement distributors and retailers were the major factors for the re-bagging of the product.

“The intention to attract customers by deliberately lowering the price, usually between N50 and N100 against the general market price, is identified as the major cause of re-bagged cement syndrome,” the guild noted.