Dear Editor,

I keep seeing these TCL-TGI full-page advertisements in your paper boasting that they can bag and supply thousands of tonnes of cement in a day and they can store thousands of tons of cement. The plant in Guyana is only a bagging plant and not a cement plant.

After all this, I was shocked to find out that some cement coming out of the plant is from the Dominican Republic and not from Trinidad or Barbados. Check yourself, it is marked on the bag. I bought one.

Mr Editor, you owe it to the Guyanese public to let them know what this plant is doing. I was misled into believing I was getting cement manufactured in Trinidad or Barbados.

I cannot understand why the government is allowing this to happen. I paid $1,600 for the cement. I could have gotten Dominican cement for $1,350 at other dealers.

Yours faithfully,

David Singh

Editor’s note

We sent a copy of this letter to TCL Guyana Inc for a comment and received the following response from Mr Mark Bender, TCI Plant Manager:

“Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Mr David Singh’s letter.

It is true that we imported one shipment of cement from the Dominican Republic, which was bagged at the TGI Plant and released on the local market. The cement imported from he Dominican Republic was sourced from CEMEX. CEMEX is a shareholder in TCL and as such is a source that we can call on if required.

Nevertheless, the circumstance under which the CEMEX cement was introduced by TGI deserves some treatment at this time since we do not normally bring cement from the Dominican Republic. The two bulk vessels that are used to transport cement to Guyana were in the North Caribbean, and because of storm activity they had to berth.

The two vessels were redeployed to the Northern Caribbean because of the low sales at the TGI plant due to the presence of large volumes of extra regional cement on account of Guyana’s non-implementation of the CET.

Since the vessels were already stranded in the Northern Caribbean and were due to bring cement to Guyana, we took the opportunity to make that shipment from the CEMEX Plant rather than have the vessels come back empty. This allowed us to keep our scheduled delivery to Guyana.

It should be noted that this was also possible because the CET was not being implemented in Guyana so that the CEMEX cement did not attract the tariff. Unwittingly, this circumstance allowed us to test Guyana’s implementation of the CET after COTED.

The cement imported from CEMEX and packaged in the TGI Plant meets the TCL standard for quality through manufacture, proper shipping and handling, storage, and packaging.

It should also be noted that it was never the intention to mislead our consumers which is why we ensured that every bag containing the CEMEX cement was clearly marked with a stamp of the country of origin.

The above circumstances also serve to clearly demonstrate the strength of the TCL Group in being able to respond immediately in any particular set of circumstances to ensure the Guyana market is kept supplied.”