Refinery Health & Safety Initiatives Re-energized

Ramu NiCo Management Limited’s Basamuk Refinery has started re-energizing its Health and Safety initiatives; post COVID-19. The Health Safety and Environment Department has been depleted in terms of manpower during COVID-19 but situations are getting back to normal.

Deputy General Manager, Paul Thompson said the HSE Department has a big role to play in terms of the Operational Environmental Management Plan which the company reports to the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority, on a monthly basis.

“We are now putting together a rolling 12 month schedule for the OEMP Compliance, with our monitoring, reporting, consultations and initiatives both within and outside the refinery fence lines and within the neighbouring communities” Thompson said

New recruitments into the HSE team have brought fresh ideas and new skillsets to the department putting the team in a strong position going forward.

Employees are starting to get back into what was pre-COVID or safety normal, and are putting back in place some of the safety initiatives which the Occupational Health and Safety Team are in charge of. For this proper awareness has to once again be conducted prior to the re-introduction of safety initiatives like the breath testing or the Blood Alcohol Concentration Testing and employees self-testing before work if they are unsure.

The HSE DGM said, the OHS Team has gone out themselves and started using the speed guns on Company trucks and vehicles, spoken to the drivers of those vehicles and informing them on why there is a need for them to drive safely instead of giving warnings for breaches straight up.

“You cannot run safety from a desk. If you can’t see it, touch it, feel it, smell it, you can’t understand it and you can’t control, assess and or assist situations.” Thompson said.

He further noted that the safety teams at Basamuk Refinery have gone into using interactive platforms like Toolbox where they share ideas by giving updates of incidents in respective fields of work, measures put in place and what the outcomes were, and are then being given feedback from other participants.

Thompson added that the focus for OH&S right now is on education and awareness rather than enforcement and compliance, and after the safety programs in place are re-energized, then these measures can fully be put back in place.