By Godfrey Chitalu
THE Zambian roofing industry has tilted towards aluminum with other forms being ignored with impunity. With asbestos banned, lightweight, easily installable, malleable, and corrosion-resistant aluminum roofing sheets have taken center stage.
Many companies, especially from China took over the market with myriad standards that surprisingly defy logic and comparison.
A quick survey showed that the supposedly same 0.5mm of IBR across suppliers is not only different in weight and quality but standards as well. Customers are being sold as lower as 2.5mm in place of as high as 0.4mm. Someone is sleeping on duty!
The last time I did an article entitled “Are we at the mercy of fake Sausages”, the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZBS) came out guns blazing. There were full-page rebuttals in national newspapers that they don’t deal with gastro issues.
A 0.4mm sheet imported from Monarch Zimbabwe is much heavier and stronger than a similar 0.4mm sheet imported from China. What went wrong? China itself can supply multiple 0.4mm IBR sheets clearly with no twins. Isn’t it up to the local regulatory authority to do the needful?
The mushrooming iron sheet manufacturing plants have clearly put the country in shit with self-imposed gauges while regulators watch the eclipse of the sun. While I know that prices gravitate towards standards, why should company – A sell 0.5mm IBR which is inferior to a similarly rated sheet!
Does the ZBS have enough micrometers to clean the mess? What effect does a poor chemical profile of aluminum have on our budding construction industry? A few weeks ago it pained me to see a collapsed church in Kasenengwa whose aluminum sheets seemed to have been cut by a razor blade!
Do we have standards for thickness, confinement time, and reagents? What route can one take if a company is claiming to offer 0.5mm aluminum and yet it is actually supplying 0.35mm?
When was the last time a government inspector visited and verified that the 0.5mm iron sheets we buy are actually for real? We need protection from these quacks being propelled by an insatiable market and our sweat.
The author is a social commentator who writes for pleasure.
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