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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Osmeña: The problem with Cebu’s cement industry
By Antonio V. Osmeña
Estatements
The production of portland cement has become an important industry today.
The tremendous expansion of the industry in the last decade is mainly due to extensive road-building and development of reinforced concrete construction, apart from the adaptability and uniformity of the material.
Concrete roads are permanent and their upkeep is practically nil. Reinforced concrete allows the construction, for instance, of a horizontal platform between two walls, which is capable of carrying heavy loads without additional support.
Bridges, piers, tunnels, dams and canal walls are built of concrete. So are sidewalks, steps, garage, factory floors and building foundations.
One reason for the almost universal use of portland cement is the comparative ease of working with or pouring it. Another is its strength, which increases with age.
Builders also consider its uniformity, which makes the structure as strong as structural steel.
Portland cement is a greenish-gray, impalpable powder. Its essential constituents are lime, silica, alumina and dicalcic silicate. Cebu island is fortunate to have these mineral resources to produce portland cement.
Some sectors have accused industrialized nations of exploiting less developed countries by controlling international trade so that the poorer economies are forced to sell their resources at a price far below their value.
In effect, the more developed countries are accused of stripping the world of its fossil fuel and other nonrenewable mineral resources without sufficient regard for the future resource needs of the less developed countries.
How valid are these charges of resource exploitation by developed countries?
To illustrate, the people of Toledo copper mine want capitalists to accept a new relationship in which their raw material and their labor are given proper value. This will, in turn, give them the opportunity to develop their economy.
But since time immemorial, the extraction of mineral resources in Cebu that are used in cement production has not benefited the local inhabitants.
Some argue that if less developed countries continue to sell their resources at low prices to more developed states, they may not have enough of these resources to sustain their own development in the future.
Another viewpoint counters the exploitation charge, by stressing that it overlooks certain facts. Most of the world’s nonfuel mineral resource supplies are found in developed countries, such as, the Soviet Union, United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa. They supply most of the world’s 20 minerals that account for about 98 percent of the total value of global consumption. Among the major exceptions are copper in South America and Africa, tin and tungsten in Southeast Asia, aluminum ore (bauxite) in the Caribbean, and cobalt in Zaire.
Others argue that government leaders and rich elites in most less developed countries are really exploiting their own people.
The cement industry is no exception.
It is now cheaper to use imported lumber for housing instead of reinforced concrete cement. How is this possible when the raw material of the cement is indigenous to Cebu?
It is high time for our government to protect the economy of Cebu’s construction industry since it has become the province’s economic barometer.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 15, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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