The Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), Ing. Jonathan Amoako-Baah has charged staff of the company to practice safety in all areas of their life by ensuring the appropriate use of safety tools and equipment.

“Every staff of GRIDCo must be a safety ambassador, who will help build a very sound safety culture, not only at work, but also in our homes, during our visits to the salons, auto mechanics and in fact, everywhere we find ourselves, so that we reduce the spate of various forms of preventable accidents at the work place and in our communities,” he said.

He noted that safety and good health practices are part and parcel of the company’s business practices and processes.

The GRIDCo boss pointed out that promoting safe practices is, therefore, core to his outfit’s mandate to sustain the daily lives and operations of both employees and the company.

He was addressing participants during the occasion of the 2019 Corporate Safety Durbar organised by the company at Takoradi, in the Western Region of the Republic of Ghana, West Africa.

The 10th Annual GRIDCO Safety Week was held under the theme: ‘Cultivating and Sustaining a Safety Culture in GRIDCO’.

He mentioned that compromising on safety would result in accidents, injuries, death and damages to properties running into huge sums of money.

“The costs of accidents to the employee is enormous, including both temporal and permanent injury and disability, physical and psychological pain and sometimes death.”

Accidents, the GRIDCo leader mentioned increase the company’s operational costs in the areas of medical expenses, increase in insurance premiums, loss of productive man hours and damage to properties amongst others.

To this end, Mr Amoako-Bash reminded GRIDCo employees on the need to raise their safety consciousness and be guided by best practices in health and safety.

“Maintaining safe practices is a shared responsibility of both employer and the employee. Management is, therefore, committed to providing facilities that promote safe and healthy working environment and that huge investments have been made by the company to promote the safety of its workers.”

He mentioned amongst other things Safety Handbook (Policy), safety rules book, contractors manual and standard protection code as some of the rule books that have been provided by management to guide the actions and decisions of employees in the performance of their duties.

Protective equipment, clothing and facilities have also been supplied, whilst dangerous facilities and installations and zones are properly demarcated and marked to help guide employees.

He also disclosed that measures have been taken to enhance safety procedures by procuring and distributing twenty non-contact high voltage detectors to eliminate the habit of teasing.

In addition, forty fire blankets were provided to some substations, while plans are underway to furnish all remaining substations with one each in the coming years.

GRIDCo has, over the years, recorded relatively low cases of occupational accidents, which, he described as encouraging and must be collectively improved upon by all workers.

He, however, expressed worry at some employees who failed to report accidents at their work stations to management for fear of being sanctioned.

That, he warned, is not a healthy practice and must be stopped.

Mr Amoako-Baah urged all employees from top management to staff to follow safety rules and procedures while they encourage their subordinates to do same. “It is a fact that employees will not be safety conscious if they do not see their superiors abide by policies and procedures,” he said.

Management remains committed to the provisions of continuous safety training for all category of staff especially safety representatives and coordinators who would be attending refresher courses before the end of first quarter of 2020.

“I have charged the Director, TSD to ensure that a cross section of staff is involved in the ongoing review of the safety rules and procedures and all other aspects of the fine-tuning Gridco’s safety process going forward,” he stated.

By: Michael Creg Afful