Raheem Akingbolu
To further demonstrate health and safety as an overarching value, Lafarge Africa Plc, a leading construction solutions company in Nigeria, has enjoined Nigerians to be safety conscious in this festive season as they cope with the attendant increase in human and vehicular movements.
This call was made by the Country Chief Executive Officer of the company, Michel Puchercos in Lagos.
He emphasised Lafarge Africa’s commitment to extend its culture of health and safety beyond employees, contractors, communities, and customers to the government and the Nigerian public.
“At this festive period, the Nigerian government and citizens must do more to prevent accidents and create a healthy and safe environment for the families, homes, work places, worship centres, communities, and so on. To achieve this, accident prevention, disaster preparedness, emergency response, periodic health checks as well as first aid training, are important safety measures that must be taken,” he advised.
Speaking further, the CEO charged members of the public to take a cue from Lafarge Africa by cultivating the habit of creating a healthy and safe environment for everyone in the society, maintaining a global health and safety management system designed to continuously improve daily human performance and actively manage risk in daily human activities, targeting operational discipline by instilling a mindset of safe execution, and communicating openly with all levels of relevant health and safety issues.
“As a leader in the construction sector, our aspiration is to conduct our business with zero harm to people. We believe in visible leadership and personal accountability for Health and Safety at all levels and throughout our organization. This is what we are calling on the Nigerian public to emulate during this festive season and beyond,” Puchercos said.
According to him, health and safety is embedded in Lafarge’s core values as the company believes that it cannot achieve excellence without a deliberate focus and commitment to health and safety.
“Hence, it continues to focus our zero harm goals with the conviction that incidents are preventable and that ‘zero harm’ is achievable,” he said.
Several actions were taken by Lafarge Africa in the current year to fully implement its health and safety policies and procedures with active involvement of its key stakeholders including employees, customers, contractors, transporters, drivers, and communities. Some of these are annual medical checks, health and safety audits, logistics health and safety, trainings on first aid and HIV/AIDS, annual health and safety month activities across locations, and sponsorships including the recent World Aids Day in Calabar, Cross River State.
