Technology, training to drive strategies for sustaining accident-free operations at Nigerite

After one full year of accident-free operations, Nigerite Limited says it is going to put systems in place such as technology and also to training and retrain its staff on safety precautions as part of management task and strategies for sustaining that achievement which it considers critical.

The company adds that it is going to embark on supervision, follow up, guidance and applauding the workers when it is necessary to do so in order to ensure they take this feat to a second and even more years of accident-free operations.

Nigerite, a member of the Etex Group, is Nigeria’s premier building materials manufacturing company with strong bias in roofing materials. The company is as ‘old’ as Nigeria having been in operation in this country since 1959.

Within these long years, it has recorded a growth trajectory that has enabled it to expand, produce and introduce innovative building solutions into the country’s crowded building materials market. Those materials  have not only aided builders in their work, but also beautified many homes.

In the past 12 months, the company did not record any accident in its operations for which it gathered staff, distributors, stakeholders in the building and safety industry to celebrate and share in their joy.

This is a big achievement by any stretch of definition, more so in a highly industrialized company that, according to its chief operations officer, Bart Verlinden, “operates heavy machinery 24 hours a day and seven days a week and so is highly exposed to risk of accident”.

This is the first time the company is recording accident-free operation for such a long period.  The nearest it had come to this was eight years ago when it recorded 120 days of accident-free operations.  Its highest accident year was 2008 when it recoded 17 cases followed by 2011 when it had eight cases.

The road to achieving the accident-free operations, according to John Bamigboye, the company’s  Quality, Safety, Health and Environment (QSHE) Manager, began with encouraging people to control their behavior; embarking on management safety tour, and holding health talk with in-house doctor and nurse who gave health instructions and advice.

“We also carried  out incident investigations with the unions; logistics safety for commercial drivers and kitchen staff training; we centralized the alert systems; did energy isolation, organised safety awareness early in the year and contractor safety management, etc”, Bamigboye revealed.

In their goodwill message, the Senior Staff Association of the company called for team work for sustaining this feat, advising that safety should be taken as culture. They tasked the management of the company to see staff motivation as key to sustaining this achievement and avoid bad policies that could heat up the system.

In the same vein, the workers union reminded everybody in the company that safety rules were no respecter of persons, and therefore advised that they should play by the rules for their own interest and that of the company.

The union also implored the management to give monetary value to whatever gift they have packaged for them as part of the celebration of the feat which, they reasoned, could not have been possible without their commitment to safety rules and standards.