09 Oct 2016

Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa Mines official has emphasised the importance of robust controls in provision of assurance to safety of employees and company processes.

Speaking during the Anglo global safety day in Orapa on Thursday (October 6), Ms Kgomotso Kereng who is the senior finance manager at the mine said critical control was capable of preventing and mitigating the consequence of highly induced energy incidents.

“It is therefore important to identify and understand the value of controls in process to safe guard lives and those of family members as much as the nation at large,” she said.

Ms Kereng said it was imperative that as leaders they should be seen to be active in the adherence of critical control requirements in areas of influence.

She urged Debswana employees to have constructive dialogue with teams in identifying appropriate critical controls during pre-task risk assessment and any risk assessment required.

Each and every process and activity she said had its own risks suggesting that a risk based method approach was critical.

She said there were various and available controls in place such as lockout and tag procedures, pressure gauges, machine guarding, monitoring processes and seat belts among others.

Ms Kereng said investigations have shown varying root causes to most of the incidents in areas, however the most prominent ones were either due to lack of implementation of controls or inability to identify relevant controls or lapse of mind.

She said primary objectives of control were to manage risk of highly induced energy incidents by preventing an unwanted event or occurrence that has the potential to injure a person, environment and equipment or machinery.

The objective she said was to minimise the consequence of the event or occurrence and sustain a process or activity in a safe and stable state of zero harm.

The Asset Management Engineer Mr Gasemodimo Pilatwe, said global safety day was an Anglo American initiative to be commemorated annually throughout various operations or businesses in pursuit of safety framework developed as vehicle towards zero harm.

The drive for the event he said was to enhance desired culture within operations as well as creating a platform to retrospect on (Environment Community Occupational Health and Safety) ECOHS’ performance and deduce learning from previous performance.

Mr Pilatwe the company was currently experiencing a worrisome incidents and injuries. That he said had not yet impacted badly on ECOHS performance as measured by Total Recording Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR-0.26) as it is still favourable to target 0.38. ENDS