Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has stopped im­port­ing ce­ment from its Caribbean sub­sidiaries. The com­pa­ny has fired up its kiln to pro­duce clink­er - a key in­gre­di­ent in ce­ment man­u­fac­ture. Dur­ing a tour of the Clax­ton bay plant yes­ter­day, TCL's pro­duc­tion man­ag­er Kei­th Ramjits­ingh, con­firmed the last ship­ment of ce­ment came in last week. Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials al­so con­firmed the price of bulk ce­ment had in­creased by 20 per cent. At yes­ter­day's tour of the fa­cil­i­ty Ramjits­ingh. said the re­turn of the com­pa­ny's work­force, as well as the re-train­ing of some em­ploy­ees, al­lowed the com­pa­ny to restart its quar­ry­ing, milling cir­cuit and pack­ag­ing op­er­a­tions. This meant that more than 85 per cent of TCL's plants were now func­tion­al, Ramjits­ingh added. It in­clud­ed the Mayo quar­ry where raw ma­te­r­i­al is mined, the kiln which man­u­fac­tures clink­er, the num­ber three ce­ment mill which grinds the clink­er., gyp­sum and poz­zolan in­to the fi­nal prod­uct and fi­nal­ly the pack­ing plant which pre­pares the ce­ment for sale.

In an in­ter­view at the plant, Ramjits­ingh said TCL pro­duced more than 2,000 tonnes of ce­ment a day, which ex­ceed­ed mar­ket de­mands lo­cal­ly. He said: "We have start­ed the last piece of equip­ment which was down since the strike be­gan. This means that now we have the kiln line run­ning, the mill cir­cuit and the pack­ing fa­cil­i­ty run­ning. "In ad­di­tion the Mayo quar­ry has restart­ed so we have start­ed the en­tire ce­ment process from the quar­ry line to the pack­ing. "We have done this by re­train­ing some of the em­ploy­ees who have come back to work." "The kiln is pro­duc­ing 1,100 tonnes of clink­er a day. Ce­ment pro­duc­tion a day stands at 2,000 tonnes," he said. He said that was more than able to ser­vice the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets so im­por­ta­tion was no longer re­quired.

Ramjits­ingh al­so re­vealed that im­po­ra­tion of clink­er may con­tin­ue over the next month, un­til TCL restarts the clink­er num­ber three mill. He said: "As you would imag­ine the clink­er stocks have been de­plet­ed dur­ing the strike. Now that kiln four is on, we will restart clink­er three. This will hap­pen with­in a month. "The Mayo plant has restart­ed and they are sup­ply­ing the slur­ry which is the raw ma­te­r­i­al to pro­duce clink­er. We ex­pect to have Mayo op­er­at­ing 24 hours with­in the next few weeks." He al­so said acts of in­tim­i­da­tion and thug­gery had de­terred some work­ers from re­turn­ing to the fac­to­ry.

Mean­while, vice pres­i­dent of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union's Clax­ton Bay branch, Lawrence Re­naud, claimed TCL was us­ing thugs to op­er­ate its Mayo fa­cil­i­ty. Re­naud said "bad boys" from Clax­ton Bay were be­ing em­ployed to keep guard over the slur­ry lines. "These bad boys have guns and cut­lass in their waist and when we go to the po­lice they are not tak­ing us on," Re­naud al­leged. He said strik­ers were try­ing to take pho­tos of the men with guns. He al­so al­leged ex­pa­tri­ates were be­ing used to work in the TCL fac­to­ry. An of­fi­cial of TCL's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­par­ment said the com­pa­ny had im­posed an ad­di­tion­al $13 sur­charge on a sack of ce­ment to fa­cil­i­tate cost of freight.