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Follow UsNEW DELHI, INDIA: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) has conferred five enterprises with the FICCI Safety Excellence in Manufacturing Awards.
The Platinum (First) Prize in the small size category was bagged by AkzoNbel Chemicals India for its specialty chemicals plant at Mahad, while Raymond Ltd. won the Gold Prize for its Jalgaon plant, said a press release.
The Platinum (First) Prize in the large size category was bagged by Lafarge India (P) Ltd. for its Sonadih Cement Plant and the Gold (Second) Prize went to Essar Oil Ltd. for its Jamnagar refinery, while the Silver (Third) Price in this category was given to Sudarshan Chemical Industries Ltd. for its Roha Plant.
Union Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge gave away the awards. He underlined the need to incorporate ILO (International Labour Organisation) Standards on safety and working conditions at the work place in the country’s legislation and ensure adoption and compliance with these standards.
Inaugurating the FICCI conference on ‘Safety for Sustainable Manufacturing Growth’, Kharge said, “Manufacturers need to initiate continual improvement programmes aimed at achieving zero accidents in their organizations and thus improve their productivity.”
Benchmarking was an effective tool for ensuring best practices in industries and had now become a way of learning from other people’s experiences, he observed.
To ensure safety and health consistency and to promote an overall safety and health culture, leading benchmarking companies need to coordinate their strategies and activities through a centralized corporate health and safety department, he added.
The minister's remarks assume significance as, according to the ILO, an estimated 1.2 million workers lose their lives annually across the world due to work-related accidents and diseases.
Each year, 250 million occupational accidents and 160 million work-related diseases occur and the economic loss from these accidents and diseases is estimated at a whopping 4 per cent of the world gross national product.