VITAFOAM PROMOTES WORKERS SAFETY

Vitafoam Nigeria Plc has stated its commitment to a safe and healthy work environment, citing its employees as a critical factor in the organisation’s success.

The firm made this commitment during its Health and safety week celebration with the theme ‘Creating a safe and healthy Vitafoam: Your rights and responsibilities’.

The Group Managing Director of Vitafoam, Taiwo Adeniyi, represented by the Finance Director, Joseph Alegbesogie declared the safety week open, stating that the week was necessary to retrain and reawaken employees to workplace risks while also conducting routine health checks on all employees.

Alegbesogie further emphasised the organisation’s readiness to ensure safety is a fundamental working principle, saying that as a business, Vitafoam had demonstrated the commitment to ensure a safe and healthy working environment for all employees.

He said, “We have decided to celebrate a safety and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle and right at work. In celebrating safety week, a number of activities have been lined up for the week to reawaken employee safety consciousness, assess our risks, train and conduct health checks with the goal of preventing workplace fatalities in our organisation.”

According to him, the firm recognises that its employees are the number one ingredient for our success and “we have put in place measures to guarantee their safety to ensure a productive workforce and a comfortable business”.

He added, “As we join other reputable organisations across the globe to celebrate World Safety and Health Day. at work, we reiterate and reaffirm our commitment to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all our employees.”

The Director General of the Lagos State Safety Commission, Lanre Mojola, applauded Vitafoam on the special occasion and the precautions and steps it had put in place to ensure it is safety-compliant and had the interests of various stakeholders at heart.

Mojola, who was represented by the Technical Adviser to the Director General of the Commission, Seun Awojobi, reiterated that safety should continue to be regarded as a value rather than a priority, noting that Vitafoam was an exemplary organisation in terms of health and safety.

Vitafoam’s Commercial Director, Sola Owoade, said the firm had Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that specify how processes were carried out and safety was one of them.

“In all of our factory locations, we have sprinkler systems. There is no other foam industry in Nigeria that has that. We have a hydrant system, a reservoir tank with a capacity of over 1.2 million litres of water and a second one of 300,000 litres.

“Our sprinkler system is automated. We have smoke detectors all over the premises and also conduct safety drills monthly to test the state of awareness of workers. We want to see their response time so that we are sure that we are safety conscious always. There are clinics in all our factory locations, an ambulance stationed in the premises and a resident nurse and a doctor that visits twice a week, in case of emergencies.” Owoade explained.