PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For eight years, a house on Ramde­hal Lane, St Au­gus­tine, has been un­der con­struc­tion.

Yes­ter­day, work­ers mixed ce­ment in the front yard of the house fever­ish­ly, but they ad­mit­ted to the Guardian they were not sure how much more work they would get at the site.

The home­own­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, con­firmed that with the price in­crease he was un­cer­tain when next he would pur­chase ce­ment to con­tin­ue con­struc­tion at the site.

When work start­ed on the house, he con­firmed that he pur­chased TCL ce­ment sacks for $44. The same TCL bag cost him $74 on Tues­day.

The own­er said when work start­ed, the house had an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $700,000, but he has had to pause and restart as a re­sult of ris­ing costs, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od.

He has pur­chased ma­te­r­i­al when he could, us­ing his avail­able sav­ings. This lat­est price in­crease is yet an­oth­er blow to his goal of home­own­er­ship and af­ter many years of re­ly­ing on TCL ce­ment, he may have no choice but to switch to Rock Hard ce­ment due to its cheap­er cost.

Oth­er con­struc­tion sites Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed in St Clair and Tu­na­puna al­so ex­clu­sive­ly used Rock Hard ce­ment.

Low-cost con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Ma­con Con­struc­tion, which had switched to Rock Hard ce­ment since its re­turn last year, said the TCL price in­crease could raise costs by thou­sands of dol­lars.

“Giv­en the con­sid­er­a­tion (of square footage) and we are able to de­ter­mine that at 12,000 square feet it would give an av­er­age in­crease of be­tween $8,000 to $10,000 be­cause ce­ment is what makes our re­in­forced con­crete struc­tures vi­able,” said Christo­pher Mo­hammed, a project en­gi­neer at Ma­con. He ex­plained while there was lit­tle dif­fer­ence in qual­i­ty be­tween the brands, the com­pa­ny had al­ready pre­ferred the im­port­ed ce­ment brand due to its abil­i­ty to quick­en the con­struc­tion process.

“We did our in­de­pen­dent test­ing; the dif­fer­ence is that Rock Hard ce­ment is able to achieve strength in 18 to 19 days ver­sus 21 days for TCL. So giv­en that con­sid­er­a­tion, both of them strength-wise are com­pa­ra­ble. It is on­ly that Rock Hard ce­ment achieves its strength quick­er so there­fore you have faster turnover,” he said.

At Darin Bhag­wans­ingh Hard­ware in Pasea, Tu­na­puna, the store’s own­er ad­mit­ted many cus­tomers were caught off guard by the price in­crease but ul­ti­mate­ly paid the new price.

How­ev­er, the hard­ware shop, which cur­rent­ly on­ly has TCL ce­ment for sale, said it would be con­sid­er­ing ob­tain­ing Rock Hard giv­en its cheap­er price point.

Ryan Ramhit, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Rock Hard Ce­ment in Trinidad, con­firmed that since the an­nounce­ment of TCL’s price in­crease on Mon­day, there had been a marked in­crease in the com­pa­ny’s sales.

“At the end of the day, a lot of (hard­wares) are com­ing back on board sole­ly. So where they would have split the busi­ness, they now kind of like Rock Hard more, I should say, than TCL. My sales have in­creased over­all,” said Ramhit, who ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the com­pa­ny had ad­e­quate stock for the in­creased de­mand.

“I’m get­ting a lot more busi­ness out of it. So def­i­nite­ly I’m hap­py for the busi­ness. And sim­ply be­cause al­so I’m able to sup­ply. I have the sup­ply, I have the fa­cil­i­ty, I have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of sup­ply­ing the en­tire coun­try and the en­tire mar­ket. So I’m hap­py for the in­crease in busi­ness over­all,” he said, adding that he was in the process of hir­ing 25 more peo­ple for the com­pa­ny.

Not all hard­wares have ad­just­ed prices just yet, as the John­ny Q Hard­ware on Ari­api­ta Av­enue con­firmed it is still sell­ing stock ob­tained be­fore Feb­ru­ary 9 in­crease at its pre­vi­ous price. The com­pa­ny said this was as it is on­ly fair to cus­tomers, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my.