The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) yesterday alerted the public that the volume of substandard iron and steel products in the market is on the increase.
Its Director-General, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, who spoke during a press conference in Lagos, said result of a monitoring and enforcement exercise carried out by the agency’s task force showed that most manufacturers had started to cut corners on the required standards for iron and steel, noting however, that SON had started to introduce measures to check the trend.
Highlighting the various areas where local steel manufacturers had compromised standards, Odumodu said the steel products that were supposed to measure 16 millimeters (mm) in diameter were discovered to measure only 14mm thereby falling short of acceptable standards by 2mm with significant impact on the overall strength.
He also said the iron and steel products that were supposed to measure 12mm measured only 10mm in diameter, while those which were supposed to be 10mm in diameter were made to measure only 8mm. The agency, he said, also observed serious violations in the area of length of various units of steel products, which constitute another area of compromise on the quality of iron and steel products by manufacturers in the country.