DTI, BoC officials, big steelmakers in hot water
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2019 16:13:58 +0000
Top officials of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Bureau of Product Standard are allegedly engineering a cover-up designed to protect large steelmakers in the Philippines, whose products have been compromising the safety standards in the country, thus endangering the lives of those living in high-rise buildings and infrastructure projects.
The well-funded “squid tactics” operation is being spearheaded by a leading steelmaker, whose top official used to be an undersecretary at the DTI. This operation works by creating a media smokescreen to cover the dangers of replacing micro-alloyed steel bars with quenched-tempered (QT) rebars without the knowledge of the building contractors, developers and end-users. These rebars are still being sold by this steelmaker to build high-rise commercial buildings and residential condominiums in key business districts.
Because the Philippines is situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire, certain types of steel materials are not recommended for use in high-rise buildings. Substandard construction materials, particularly rebars, would not withstand a magnitude-7.2 earthquake.
QT steel is made by spraying cold water on a red-hot steel bar. In this process, the steel’s metallurgy is altered. The outer core becomes very strong and brittle, but is also relatively very thin — about 1 or 2 millimeter in thickness. The thin outer layer, which is brittle, can be easily damaged during an earthquake and can therefore cost lives.
Three months ago, government investigators in Pampanga unveiled security footage taken at the height of a magnitude-6.1 earthquake. The footage showed supporting beams “exploding” inside the four-story Chuzon supermarket in Porac. The quake, which killed 18 people and injured 282 others, caused the building’s steel and concrete foundations to crumble within seven seconds, giving victims inside the supermarket no chance to escape.
Found by probers at the Chuzon site were QT steel bars with telltale markings of the leading steelmaker.
In China and Taiwan, QT steel bars were banned after government testers decided that QT steel were only strong on the outer layer because of the quenching process. Despite these alarming findings, the DTI has been looking the other way, while the big steel manufacturer continues to misdeclare the true grades, sizes, lengths, weights and pieces of steel billets it imports from all over the world. The steel rebars made from these billets are also misdeclared as Grade 60 or the standard steel grade used for high-rise constructions and major infrastructure.
Last week, a cabal of corrupt officials of the DTI, the Bureau of Customs (BoC), along with top officers of this big steel manufacturer were thrown into panic when the Presidential Anti-Corruption
Commission (PACC) confirmed that it was investigating allegations of corruption between big steel manufacturers and the BoC that has been depriving the government of billions of pesos in tax revenues, including penalties for improper import declarations.
PACC Chairman Dante Jimenez bared that his office had unearthed data that shows large-scale “technical smuggling” had been taking place in the past ten years as a result of alleged collusion between BoC officials and large steelmakers. Jimenez acknowledged that the case involves steelmakers clearing their products at the Customs point of entry, notwithstanding discrepancies in the documents submitted for these items.
The PACC suspects that big steel importers, in collusion with BoC officials, had been manipulating the Harmonized System universal codes for export and import goods. Specifically, the steelmakers have been describing the imports of cast and prime steel billets used for steel manufacturing as Grade 60 when in fact the orders under the same code are a mix of Grade 40 (5 sp) and Grade 33 (3 sp). This also allows the steelmakers to allegedly misdeclare the imported billets at a lower value.