TCL Guyana honours local customers

Feb 08, 2014 News

– to reintroduce concrete roads

Trinidad Cement Company Limited (TCL) Guyana Incorporated yesterday honoured some of its customers, during a cocktail-style appreciation ceremony held at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown.
During the ceremony, executives of TCL, General Manager, Satnarine Bachew, Plant Manager, Mark Bender, and Marketing Representative, Eric Whaul, all paid glowing tributes to those invited, as they expressed gratitude for the loyalty of the local clientele over the past couple of years.

Christopher Persaud (right) of David Persaud Investments receive a ‘Customer Appreciation Award’ from TCL’s General Manager, Satnarine Bachew

The entity’s customer-base primarily includes hardware owners and construction material suppliers.
The brief speeches were then followed by an award segment, during which trophies were given to TGI’s customers including those from Toolsie Persaud Limited, BK International, David Persaud Investments, Ramdial Ramoutar, Bukhan General Store, and Suresh General Store.
Present also at this ceremony were TCL’s staff members along with representatives from the TCL Group of subsidiary companies who are here conducting training on construction technology.
A TCL group recently arrived in Guyana with the aim of reintroducing concrete roads.
According to Avaleen Mooloo, TCL Group’s Civil Engineer, apart from lasting longer, roads built using the ‘soil cement’ stabilisation technology would cost less, especially here in Guyana, since all the materials needed are available locally. “Guyana would no longer have to worry about importing asphalt,” she stressed.
Mooloo explained that concrete roads were being done here; however, like Jamaica, the country has moved away from this technology and had started to use asphalt.
The Engineer told Kaieteur News that upon realizing the benefits of the ‘soil cement’ technology and how economically viable it is, TCL is looking to simultaneously re-launch it in the two countries.
Mooloo explained that currently, both the East Bank Highway and the Parfaite Harmonie Access Road are being constructed using the concrete foundation. “This is also being used by private contractors on smaller projects,” Mooloo said.
The TCL official guaranteed that roads made from this technology can be sustained with little or no maintenance. It was to this end that smaller islands across the Caribbean have fully implemented the use of concrete roads.
“It’s because these French, West Indian Islands do not have enough resources to continue repairing their roads that they are sticking to the concrete foundation,” Mooloo told this newspaper.
She explained that the durability of the concrete roads is not dependent on the state of the soil. Therefore, even if the soil condition is poor, the road will remain as is, without deteriorating, she asserted.
Kaieteur News was told that in an effort to ensure that the ‘soil cement’ stabilisation process is properly used and fully implemented; the TCL Group has started executing a series of training sessions here.
The seminars will be facilitated by staff of the recently established- TCL Learning Academy such as Mooloo who is also the Chief Facilitator, and Andira Kowlessar, Coordinator of the programme and TCL’s Customer Excellence Officer.
The training target students enrolled in tertiary and vocational institutions as well as professionals within the industry; both government and private.
Avaleen Mooloo explained that the trainings are divided into Level One, which is the introduction; Advanced Level, and a separate Building Technology course; which is a more practical aspect of the training, and will be taught to the students of the technical institutions.
Mooloo said that initially, Trinidad and Tobago had invested $2M towards developing a “greener” way of constructing roads. “The aim was to enhance the quality of the roads using recycled materials.”
She added that as a result of this, researchers agreed that cement would be use in the foundation of the base layer.
“The cement is used to regenerate straight in the base layer,” Mooloo said.