Louis Dreyfus Commodities organizes Safety Awareness Day

By: Benjamin Xornam Glover, TEMA The over 600 factories and establishments within the Tema Industrial setting do not have adequate factor Inspectors who are suppose to ensure safety and good maintenance practices. There are currently only four factories Inspectors in the Tema office of the Department of Factories Inspectorate who also lack logistics and funding to help them effectively discharge their mandate. These were disclosed by Mr Evans Opare, Senior Factories Inspector at an annual Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) Day celebration organized by Louis Dreyfus Commodities, (LDC), Ghana limited at Tema. LDC has set aside a day every year to celebrate safety awareness at workplace to ensure that workers focus their attention on the need to create a safe and healthy work environment. This year’s safety awareness day celebration was on the theme: “Sustainability starts with safety” Inadequate logistics Mr Opare bemoaned the lack of resources and logistics for the factory inspectorate and stressed that the situation has greatly limited the capabilities regularly visit the factories and establishments to enforce safety rules and regulations. He explained that under normal circumstances, Inspectors are expected to visit each factory at least twice a year but due to the logistical challenges they are unable to do that adding that in some cases for close to two years, they have not visited a factory to inspect their premises. “At the moment what we are doing is to improvise by organizing training programmes since we are not able to visit all the factories as we ought to do,” he said He therefore appealed to government to support the department with logistics and fund to enable it discharge its duties effectively. Mr Opare underscored the importance of safety in an organization and encouraged managers of establishments to take keen interest in ensuring a safe working environment for their members of staff. Incorporate safety in output The Chief Executive of Louis Dreyfus Commodities in charge of the West Africa Sub-Region, Mr Robert Dovlo expressed the hope that employees will incorporate health and safety issues into their output and help the company grow. “When you breached common sense, you breach safety and hence put everyone else at risk,” he said. The Managing Director of Louis Dreyfus Commodities Ghana, Mr Francois Centlivre said credible sustainability program must have a strong safety program as a foundation to build upon. He added that as safety results improve, workers will be contributing towards the building of strong sustainability program and stressed the need for all to play their roles efficiently. “To be a sustainable company, we need to move from reactive to proactive safety and risk management”. The SHE Officer of Louis Dreyfus Commodities, Mr Francis Obosu recounted a number of measures taken to ensure a safe and working environment for employees. This he said included the installation of 10,000 liter containment to hold water to be used in by the Fire Service in case of emergency as well as the installation of power regulating device in their offices to check the misuse of energy amongst other safety measures. Awards were presented to three employees of Louis Dreyfus Commodities who have contributed to Safety Awareness in the organization. They are Mr Dauda Djibu, Albert Appiah and Enoch Kwesi Sarpong. Examples of industrial fires in Tema The industrial hub of Tema has in the past years recorded a number of bad fires that led to the lost of properties and job. It will be recalled that in June 2012, the packaging unit of the Tema Chemicals Company Limited (CHEMICO) was razed to the ground by fire at the company’s premises at Community One. Another incident occurred in January 2013 at the BBC Industrial Company a paint manufacturing company, in Tema. In all these incidents not only did it take personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) several hours of intense fire fighting to bring the fire under control under control but also led to job losses and damage to equipment installed at high cost. -END-