Peter Uzoho
As part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR), Falck Prime Atlantic, an oil and gas training company, has offered emergency response skills training to staff of the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA), to prepare them to be able to save more lives during emergencies.
The LASWA staff were part of the 400 beneficiaries targeted to be trained by the organisation under its Basic First Aid/Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Scheme 2019, with the tag: “Saving Lives, One Nigerian at a t\Time.”
The training, practically delivered by a health/emergency response expert, with the aid of special mannequins, taught the participants the step by step method of reviving an unconscious or lifeless patient while waiting for the appearance of a doctor.
Speaking at the training recently, the Manager, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Falck Prime Atlantic, Ms Aderonke Adebanjo, said the company offers training in diverse areas including sea survival, first aids, emergency response, crisis management and so on.
Adenanjo added that the firm went into such services to fill a gap it identified in Nigeria, explaining that in workplaces and crowdy areas, a lot of people do not know what to do when someone collapses and becomes unconscious or lifeless.
She said: “We want to solve that problem; we want to change that narrative even if it is in a very small way. What we are doing is going across different industries, we were at CMS to train a lot of bus drivers, we were at Iporin market, we trained some of the market traders there. We identified that they had a really bad fire last year, so we shared some firefighting awareness training to them.
“We have also done training for domestic staff, we hope to do celebrities, students, NYSC youth copers, and all kinds of industries because we want to reach as many people across the different socio-economic strata.
“Now we have decided that we will also train some of the Lagos officials. This is a training that costs a lot of money to do, but this is part of our CSR for 2019.”
Adebanjo also noted that the training was taken to LASWA officials because they were one of the company’s targets for government officials, especially as they deal with the water ways.
“So, we just thought it will be interesting to bring it to them because there are all kinds of emergencies in the water. We want to empower them on those things that they need on the job so they can save more lives.
“We are doing the practical training which is not just about theory. We are going to get down on specialised mannequins to enable them to actually feel what it is like to save somebody’s life. So, hopefully, it will stick better to them.”
Meanwhile, commending Falck Prime Atlantic for such laudable initiative, the General Manager, LASWA, Mr. Oluwadamilola Emmanuel, described it as an initiative that demands more private sector collaboration, to help build a safety culture within our environment.
“For us as a regulator in the waterways, it is going to help us to be able to respond much quicker and also more effectively in terms of emergencies,” he said.
