Vitafoam Nigeria Plc has committed itself to a safe and healthy work environment, citing its employees as a critical factor to the organisation’s success.
The foam and soft furnishing manufacturer, with over 60 years’experience made this commitment as it celebrated the health and safety week themed “Creating a safe and healthy Vitafoam: Your rights and responsibilities.”
Group Managing Director, Vitafoam Nigeria Plc, Mr. Taiwo Adeniyi, who was represented by the Finance Director, Joseph Alegbesogie, declared the safety week open, stating that the event 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: “As a business, we have demonstrated the commitment to ensure a safe and healthy working environment for our employees. We have decided to celebrate a safety and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle and right at work. In celebrating the 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.”
“At Vitafoam, we recognize that our employees are the number one ingredient for our success and we’ve put in place measures to guarantee their safety to ensure a productive workforce and a comfortable business. As we join other reputable organisations across the globe to celebrate the world day for safety and health at work, we reiterate and reaffirm our commitment to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all our employees,” he added in the opening remarks.
In his own contribution, Alegbesogie, attributed the company’s top-notch performance to robust safety policies, training and ability to engage the right employees.
Director General of the Lagos State Safety Commission, Lanre Mojola, applauded Vitafoam, the entire management and staff on this special occasion and the precautions and steps the company has put in place to ensure it is safety-compliant and has 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 and that Vitafoam is an exemplary organization when it comes to health and safety.
Vitafoam’s Commercial Director, Sola Owoade, said the firm had Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that specify how processes are carried out and safety is 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 reservoirtank with a capacity of over 1.2million 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 said.