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Saturday, July 26, 2025

TCL gets green light to resume operations

by

Carisa Lee
1905 days ago
20200508

Carisa Lee

The Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) com­pa­ny has been giv­en the green­light from the Gov­ern­ment to re­sume man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing of ce­ment.

A press re­lease sent by TCL on Fri­day said the com­pa­ny af­ter com­ply­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions for al­most 40 days was grant­ed per­mis­sion to restart busi­ness.

Rock Hard Dis­trib­u­tors lim­it­ed told Guardian Me­dia that they wrote to the Gov­ern­ment al­so re­quest­ing per­mis­sion to re­open af­ter they heard the news.

But this in­for­ma­tion may be mu­sic to some cus­tomers’ ears as for two weeks, hard­ware stores across the coun­try had no ce­ment and some that did hike up their prices.

“I went to every hard­ware from Princes town to Bar­rack­pore and then back on­to the Moru­ga road, no ce­ment,” one woman post­ed on Face­book.

“Yes­ter­day. I went to pur­chase four bags, one hard­ware had it for $70 while the next $100.00,”an­oth­er woman said.

Guardian Me­dia got in­for­ma­tion that sug­gest that hard­ware stores were sell­ing ce­ment for up to $200.

Now the Min­is­ter of Health dur­ing a Vir­tu­al Press Con­fer­ence on April 20th made it clear that ma­sons and car­pen­ters should not work on peo­ple’s hous­es. Con­struc­tion was deemed non-es­sen­tial

But some peo­ple told Guardian Me­dia that they want­ed to pur­chase ce­ment to for do it your­self projects that need­ed ce­ment as they were home.

“As I was out of work I was try­ing to make use of my time,” Nick Singh said.

How­ev­er, when Singh went to pur­chase ce­ment he was told it was $115 per bag a price he was un­able to pay.

There was then the ques­tion of where these hard­ware stores were ob­tain­ing a sup­ply of ce­ment if dis­trib­u­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers halt­ed op­er­a­tions since mid­night March 29th.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Rock Hard Ryan Ramhit ad­mit­ted to dis­trib­ut­ing ce­ment af­ter the lock­down. He said he con­sult­ed with his lawyers when he saw TCL op­er­at­ing as usu­al but was asked to stop on April 15th.

TCL did not con­firm if they were dis­trib­ut­ing ce­ment post lock­down but in their re­lease on Fri­day said they com­plied with Gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia ob­tained two in­voic­es from hard­ware stores that seemed to be the sale of ce­ment from TCL on April 9 and 16..

Some hard­ware own­ers al­so con­firmed that they re­ceived calls from TCL ask­ing if they want­ed to pur­chase ce­ment dur­ing the month of April.

Guardian Mer­dia asked if the com­pa­ny was giv­en an ex­emp­tion from the Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er ,they did not an­swer. The ques­tion was sent to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but he did not re­spond ei­ther.

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon said in an emailed re­sponse on Thurs­day that the dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing of ce­ment is not al­lowed as an es­sen­tial ser­vice.

Her re­sponse added that the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try has heard that some hard­wares are sell­ing ce­ment at dou­ble or triple the price and the mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.


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