Vedanta Raises Awareness On Zero Harm Culture, During National Safety Week

NEW DELHI (March 10, 2016): Vedanta Limited observed the ‘45^th National Safety Week’ across its operations. The week-long activity, from 4 - 10^th March, 2016 highlighted Vedanta’s priority towards the safety of the employees and inculcating a zero harm culture.

“Safety is an imperative to Vedanta’s vision of long-term sustainable development as well as crucial to maintain the ‘Licence to Operate’. The importance of a zero harm workplace from business, leadership and human perspective is critical and the company follows global benchmarking standards in terms of adhering to safety procedures, work environment and safety infrastructure. Every business leader must be passionately committed to their workforce's safety,” says Tom Albanese, CEO, Vedanta.

Safety is a core value and a part of the company’s long-term business goals. In FY15, the company imparted over 750,000 hours of safety training to employees and contractors. The Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), a unit of measuring productive time lost as a result of worker injury, reduced substantially from 0.54 to 0.46  in FY15(YoY).

All Vedanta’s companies have adopted a robust approach to hazard identification and risk assessment studies, which is conducted phase-by-phase. In terms of certification, 45/52 sites of the company are OHSAS 18001 approved.

Key Highlights of the National Safety Week:

The company’s aluminium operations in Lanjigarh (Odisha) organised a ‘safety march’ and urged all the workers to make safety a habit. Around 1,300 students in the area participated in Safety-themed competitions, promoting the practice among the country’s future leaders. At the operations in Jharsuguda (Odisha), employees participated in safety-themed quiz competitions to highlight its importance.

At its aluminium operations in Korba (Chhattisgarh), BALCO, organized a marathon or a ‘Run for Safety’ to mark the event. A special workshop on safety for women was also conducted. Street theatre, safety themed quiz and informative seminars were organized to spread the message among the workers and their families.

At Sterlite Copper, the recital of the Safety pledge was followed by an awareness programme on achieving a zero harm culture, the importance of following Standard operating procedure, assessing the risk and importance of Single point accountability, BBS system and other Safety management system.

At Talwandi Sabo Power Limited’s operations in Punjab, various programs were organized with internal and external stakeholders such as employees, contractors and the host community, to create awareness on safety and to achieve a zero harm culture. The company organised firefighting and first aid trainings for employees and also conducted thematic tool box talks on various safety topics at all plant areas.

Vedanta’s Iron Ore operations in Goa held a safety march and recited the safety pledge, along with conducting training on fire fighting, defense driving and electrical safety.

Cairn India, in Rajasthan, marked the National Safety Week by stressing on the importance of ‘Strengthening safety movement to achieve zero harm’ through various competitions and screening of films.

At Malco Energy Limited (MEL), the safety record set by MEL for maintaining zero LTIFR was applauded and the week-long competitions created wide spread Safety awareness.

Vedanta’s Sustainable Development Framework guides site teams to consider employees and contractors when developing their management systems. When it comes to workforce safety, there is no difference between a contract worker and an employee. Contract workers constitute 70% of Vedanta’s workforce and contractors are obliged to submit safety credentials during the tendering process.