Qatar Fertiliser Company (Qafco) has been awarded the “IFA Green Leaf Award” for its “outstanding” implementation of management systems to ensure Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) controls across the product life cycle at its ammonia and urea production facilities.
Also, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) honoured Qafco’s efforts in occupational safety and health by giving two awards, it was announced here yesterday.
IFA Green Leaf Award 2013 was presented at the 2013 IFA Global Safety Summit and Technical Symposium held in Santiago, Chile and organised by the International Fertiliser Industry Association (IFA).
The awards given every two years recognise outstanding performance in safety, health and environment (SHE) in the fertiliser industry. The evaluation process for the award done by a panel of independent judges involves performance records in key areas of lost-time injury, sickness rate, and yearly emissions for the previous five years.
This performance data is compared to global benchmarks and best-available technique (BAT) levels, the company said yesterday.
Qafco scored the highest at 375 points amongst the international fertiliser companies outscoring the first runner up Tata Chemicals Limited (India) by 40 points, which scored 335 points, while the second runner up Profertil SA (Argentina) scored 333 points.
Qafco vice-chairman and CEO Khalifa al-Sowaidi said: “Our commitment to providing a safe workplace stems from a deep personal belief and moral obligation to our employees, business partners and stakeholders. This belief is shared by our management team and is part of every decision we make as an organisation. After all, a safe decision is the correct decision.”
Qafco said the RoSPA awards scheme is the largest and longest-running programme of its kind in the UK. It recognises commitment to accident and ill health prevention and is open to businesses and organisations of all types and sizes from across the UK and overseas. The scheme not only looks at accident records, but also entrants’ overarching health and safety management systems, including practices such as leadership and workforce involvement.
The Management of Occupational Road Risk (MORR) Gold Award and the RoSPA Silver Award for occupational safety and health will be presented to Qafco at a ceremony to be held in the UK on May 14.
Al-Sowaidi said, “At Qafco safety has always been our topmost priority. It is based on the philosophy that we have a responsibility to work safely and promote safety for the benefit of our employees, our contractors and the public which we serve. At Qafco, we have structured our operations around a safety programme that puts people first. We continue to invest heavily in safety training, support, monitoring, equipment and programmes that allow us to achieve industry leading safety records.
“It is our belief that every incident is preventable and with a combination of proper education, documentation, equipment, incentives, monitoring and communication we can continue to be free of lost-time incidents.”