GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent Stu­art Fran­co says the or­gan­i­sa­tion will con­tin­ue to en­cour­age its mem­ber­ship, the wider pri­vate sec­tor, and the pub­lic sec­tor to share the lessons learnt from the ac­ci­dents and in­ci­dents that take place at their fa­cil­i­ties.

“We al­so en­cour­age the shar­ing of near miss­es. We be­lieve ‘lessons learnt’ should be shared as the po­ten­tial ex­ists for a re­peat of sim­i­lar types of ac­ci­dents,” Fran­co said while speak­ing dur­ing Am­cham T&T’s 27th An­nu­al Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion, which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

He al­so not­ed that there were sev­er­al lessons brought for­ward by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­cern­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty. This, he ex­plained, in­clud­ed men­tal health.

“This is one of the ma­jor rea­sons why we con­tin­ue to in­clude men­tal health on our HSSE agen­da. COVID-19 may have been one of the worst dis­rup­tors we have ex­pe­ri­enced in our life­time, but it al­so made sure we no longer over­look ar­eas of men­tal well-be­ing and psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty.

“So, when it comes to cre­at­ing sus­tain­able work en­vi­ron­ments and em­pow­er­ing em­ploy­ees, we must do every­thing with­in our pow­er to en­sure that every em­ploy­ee feels ac­cept­ed and re­spect­ed in the work­place,” Fran­co said.

Fran­co added that with the rise of re­mote work, tech­nol­o­gy has been a mas­sive con­trib­u­tor to build­ing ex­cel­lence in busi­ness op­er­a­tions and en­hanc­ing safe­ty.

“We have seen how em­brac­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in our HSE op­er­a­tions has em­pow­ered em­ploy­ees to make bet­ter-in­formed de­ci­sions which ul­ti­mate­ly re­sults in re­duced risks and more lives saved. So, let’s con­tin­ue util­is­ing the in­no­va­tion blocks avail­able to us to build and sus­tain our safe­ty cul­ture,” Fran­co ad­vised.

How­ev­er, he said with the in­creas­ing preva­lence of cy­ber at­tacks more must be done.

“We must al­so be aware of threats posed by cy­ber crim­i­nals, since our em­ploy­ees are our or­gan­i­sa­tion’s first line of de­fence against cy­ber at­tacks we must con­tin­ue to em­pow­er them by in­creas­ing their cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty aware­ness, ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing es­pe­cial­ly now that re­mote work is here to stay,” he stat­ed.

When it comes to cre­at­ing sus­tain­able work en­vi­ron­ments and em­pow­er­ing em­ploy­ees, Fran­co re­it­er­at­ed that en­ti­ties must do every­thing with­in their pow­er to en­sure that every em­ploy­ee feels ac­cept­ed and re­spect­ed in the work­place.

“We al­so need to come to­geth­er more by bring­ing all the in­ter­est groups in one room to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try. We look for­ward to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion meet­ing to dis­cuss this crit­i­cal is­sue and take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind all that Am­cham T&T stands ready and will­ing to as­sist in any way we can,” Fran­co as­sured.