Top officials of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Bureau of Product Standard are allegedly engineering a cover-up designed to protect large steelmakers in the Philippines, whose products have been compromising the safety standards in the country, thus endangering the lives of those living in high-rise buildings and infrastructure projects.

The well-funded “squid tactics” operation is being spearheaded by a leading steelmaker, whose top official used to be an undersecretary at the DTI. This operation works by creating a media smokescreen to cover the dangers of replacing micro-alloyed steel bars with quenched-tempered (QT) rebars without the knowledge of the building contractors, developers and end-users. These rebars are still being sold by this steelmaker to build high-rise commercial buildings and residential condominiums in key business districts.

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