Jamshedpur: The 12th Sumilan on ‘Involvement and commitment of vendor partners for managing contractor safety at Tata Steel’ was organised on Tuesday at Steelenium Hall within Steel Works.
‘Sumilan’ is a monthly conference organised by Corporate Safety, Tata Steel, in which its vendor partners get the opportunity to interact with the management and are apprised of different safety related concerns in the Company.
Jeffrey A Forgang, vice president, Safety, Tata Steel, addressed the vendor partners on the occasion. He outlined some of the basic safety initiatives for all to follow. These included increased visibility of the vendor personnel on-site to get a first-hand understanding of the workplace challenges, deployment of skilled supervisors and employees, no compromise on quality of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and required machinery, execution of standard operating procedure (SOP) at the shop-floor, and non-tolerance of safety violation, among other things.
At the outset, Shyam Sunder, Chief, Corporate Safety, briefed the gathering on the objective of ‘Sumilan’ at Tata Steel and how it has helped in implementing important issues like safety timings, quality of PPEs to the employees, introduction of bus service for vendor employees inside the plant, etc.
The vision of the Company was lauded by Mr Shivesh Verma , vice president, Tata Workers’ Union (TWU), who stressed on the need for training of the contractor employees.
Fatalities and serious injuries are major concerns for Tata Steel. One of the key ways to mitigate the issue is an effective communication system for proper implementation of safety measures. It was with this objective that ‘Sumilan’ was introduced in Tata Steel in October 2013, as a monthly vendor-management communication initiative, to enhance safety communication and deployment in the Company.