PANJIM: The 53rd National Safety Day and Week Celebrations 2024 jointly organised by the Green Triangle Society, Panjim under the aegis of Inspectorate of Factories and Boilers was inaugurated at the Caculo Mall Terminal Banquets, St Inez, Panjim, on Monday.
The theme for National Safety Day 2024 is ‘Focus on Safety Leadership for ESG Excellence’, marks a significant shift towards integrating safety practices with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles.
Speaking on this occasion, chief guest Goa State Industries Association (GSIA) president Anirudh Dempo highlighted the importance of safety and stressed the need to take up the advanced measures to ensure safety of all working class people in the industrial sector.
Keynote speaker Kishore Shah, managing trustee of GDP Foundation, spoke on ESG excellence and stressed on industries taking safety measures on a large scale.
“Companies and industries are tight pressed. When you talk about profit then there is simple formula of sales price minus cost price multiplied by volume. All these years, safety was more like management. But now things have changed.
Shah further said that the idea of ESG was brought in by investors, who now find the current assessment of industries in terms of financial results and other things creditable. But the investors are also interested in the character of the company. The investors were worried as they were putting in trillions of dollars of money into industries. “God forbid if something goes wrong then it will be a tremendous loss to the trust. Safety all these years was restricted to factories and the nearest environment,” he said.
Shah said, ”You also have to know what your vendors are doing. You may have been doing a lot of things, but you also have to do what society is doing. During the last 10 years, investment in ESG has gone up by 68 per cent. There was investment in ESG in European countries as they saw visible impact in the growth, cost reduction, regulatory intervention reduction and investment assessment optimisation.”
”If we have to be leaders in safety then we will have to see the entire process of how we procure material. There should be thinking of circular economy responsibility. Startups can be funded. There has to be involvement of the community also otherwise industry alone cannot do anything. Every industry should do their ESG appraisal,” Shah added.
Chief Inspector of Factories and Boilers Anant S Pangam and Honorary Secretary of Green Triangle Society also spoke.
Earlier, Green Triangle Society chairman Dr Pradeep Padwal welcomed the gathering and Inspector of Factories Sanjay R Naik proposed a vote of thanks. Manesh Shrivant, Board Member, Green Triangle Society conducted the programme.
On the occasion, all the successful candidates of the ‘Four weeks Certificate Course in Safety and Health for Supervisory Personnel Working in Hazardous Process Industries’ organised by Inspectorate of Factories and Boilers, were presented with certificates at the hands of Anirudh Dempo and other dignitaries present.
