The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has ordered the closure of a steel company for producing substandard steel rods and pushing them to the markets.

The SON’s Director in charge of Compliance, who led the team to the steel company, Bede Obayi, accused the company of a lot of irregularities and non-conformity with quality practices.

The company, Yongxing Steel Company Limited, located in the Ugua community area of Benin City, Edo State, was also said not to have the necessary equipment and capacity to produce standard and quality steel bars.

 A statement from SON quoted Obayi as saying that apart from having a dysfunctional testing machine, the chemical composition of the steel products made by the company also failed conformity test. He said, ‘’The minimum standards length of steel bars in accordance with Nigeria Industrial Standards showed serious non-compliance to standards as most of them were not up to 12 metres.

“Again, the company has no skilled workers to man production that could meet standard requirements while the mechanical properties have poor yield strength.’’

According to Obayi, SON has a responsibility to protect consumers and end-users from substandard products, adding that strict monitoring and enforcement constitute part of focused direction of the SON management led by Osita Aboloma to create jobs, promote local industries and grow the economy.

“SON recently carried out verification of the steel sector with a paid-on-the spot assessment visits to some steel manufacturing firms in Lagos, Ogun and other states.

“The exercise followed allegations that some steel companies were producing iron rods without putting identification marks on them,” he added.

 

Source:punchng.com

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