Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Ja­maican-based com­pa­ny GraceKennedy (GK) has lim­it­ed trav­el by its staff in a re­sponse to the Coro­n­avirus out­break.

In a re­cent in­vestor brief­ing, Don We­h­by the Group’s CEO said: “Ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day (March 3rd) we have put in a trav­el re­stric­tion on all GK staff.”

He con­tin­ued: “GK staff can on­ly trav­el on es­sen­tial busi­ness and it will have to be ap­proved by me if they so de­sire to trav­el on es­sen­tial busi­ness.”

We­h­by ex­plained that the com­pa­ny has done its checks, and has con­clud­ed that it has two months sup­ply of all its fin­ished prod­ucts and raw ma­te­ri­als.

We­h­by not­ed that GK, which dis­trib­utes its prod­ucts in T&T through HAD­CO, has six fac­to­ries in Ja­maica.

The Group CEO said: “So we have raw ma­te­ri­als and fin­ished prod­ucts from ar­eas that we would have bought which have been af­fect­ed by the coro­n­avirus.”

As part of the com­pa­ny’s plan­ning process, even be­fore the news of the Covid-19 out­break was an­nounced, it pos­sessed a sys­tem where it must have al­ter­na­tive sup­pli­ers.

We­h­by said GK has had a very ro­bust Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity Plan (BCP) in place for many years, where every com­pa­ny in the group has a des­ig­nat­ed BCP of­fi­cer.

A few years ago, We­h­by re­marked that GK ac­tu­al­ly had a pan­dem­ic guide­line in place. He stat­ed that it is now a mat­ter of rolling out those guide­lines across the group.

An­oth­er sys­tem in place at GK is a “Top-risk sys­tem”. We­h­by re­marked that this is where each com­pa­ny has to present to him and re­spec­tive boards its top risk, which is then analysed and mit­i­gat­ing ac­tions put in place.

We­h­by in­di­cat­ed that he has al­so es­tab­lished a steer­ing com­mit­tee, chaired by GK’s Chief Risk Of­fi­cer Lee-Anne Bruce that will re­port to him on a week­ly ba­sis and if there’s an ur­gent mat­ter - on a dai­ly or hourly ba­sis.

The steer­ing com­mit­tee, which com­pris­es se­nior ex­ec­u­tives across the group, are mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments on an hourly ba­sis with the coro­n­avirus and re­port­ing back to him.

We­h­by said: “So in a nut­shell, as a cor­po­ra­tion I think we are well pre­pared to deal with the coro­n­avirus. It is very fright­en­ing when you’re read what is hap­pen­ing through­out the world, so we have to play our own part and do what we have to do.”