December 03, 2008

TATA Steel stressing on safety issues

A few years on, TATA Steel could be the safest steel maker in the world.

Mr OB Krishna chief of safety department at TATA Steel said that "We have found that the accidents or deaths that take place within the works are not due to any major mishap but for the commonly accepted unfair practices. So, we have decided to first identify them and later do the needful."

He added that to ensure that TATA Steel becomes a completely accident free enterprise, the safety department of the firm has announced the rollout of theme based quarterly safety campaigns. The campaign for the first quarter on 2008-09 fiscal was launched by Mr HM Nerurkar COO of TATA Steel, along with Mr Raghunath Pandey president of TATA Workers’ Union at Steelennium Hall recently.

A TATA Steel spokesperson said that “The theme for the campaign is eliminating commonly accepted unsafe practice. The objective of the campaign is to identify unsafe practices and eliminate them through the plan do check act cycle. A mobile safety exhibition safety on wheel has also been developed based on the theme. It is an effort by the company to produce accident free steel."

Elaborate planning has been made by the safety department to ensure that even minute injuries could be evaded. To begin with, a campaign would be run across the departments to identify the so called commonly practiced unfair means, compensation would be given to workers who abide by the norms and awareness campaigns would be run within the departments from time to time. Secondly, some of these means would be prioritized and newer methodologies would be involved to deal with them later. International safety consultant Du Point has been roped in for a period of 3 years to implement the safety rules.