Con­grat­u­la­tions are in or­der for Pow­er­Gen, the awardee of the Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion’s “Safe­ty Award of Ex­cel­lence 2020”, af­ter top­ping 45 oth­er pow­er com­pa­nies in the world.

Ac­cord­ing to Hi­roshi Tachiga­mi, the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion, “The safe­ty man­age­ment stan­dards of Pow­er­Gen are clear­ly among the best in the world.”

The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial press re­lease from Pow­er­Gen on win­ning the award.

POW­ER­GEN WINS MARUBENI GLOB­AL SAFE­TY AWARD

In the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Pow­er­Gen was not on­ly able to cop the Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion’s Safe­ty Award of Ex­cel­lence, 2020, top­ping 45 oth­er com­pa­nies around the world, but al­so con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go while mit­i­gat­ing any spread of the virus with­in the com­pa­ny’s plants.

The Safe­ty Award of Ex­cel­lence, 2020, was pre­sent­ed in a vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny on Ju­ly 7th, held si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in Trinidad and Japan.

The han­dover was done in a video­taped pre­sen­ta­tion by Mr Hi­roshi Tachiga­mi, the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Marubeni Pow­er busi­ness in the Amer­i­c­as, Eu­rope, and Aus­tralia.

The Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion, which has a 39 per­cent stake in Pow­er­Gen, joint­ly owns over 45 pow­er com­pa­nies.

Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Dr Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, com­mend­ed Marubeni for con­fer­ring this award dur­ing the pan­dem­ic chal­lenge.

“It is a tes­ta­ment to the strong co­op­er­a­tion and part­ner­ship be­tween Japan and Trinidad and To­ba­go that we con­tin­ue to have strong links in­volv­ing the pri­vate sec­tor and al­so the pub­lic sec­tor across many thou­sands of miles,” Min­is­ter Browne said. 

In pre­sent­ing the award, Hi­roshi Tachiga­mi not­ed:

“The safe­ty man­age­ment stan­dards of Pow­er­Gen are clear­ly among the best in the world. I must com­mend the en­tire team, from man­age­ment to field work­ers, for im­ple­ment­ing and meet­ing such de­mand­ing safe­ty bench­marks.”

He added: “What we have learned is that, while pro­to­cols are need­ed to stay safe, much of the suc­cess comes down to cul­ture and val­ues – par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ci­pline and con­cern for oth­ers. The Safe­ty Award of Ex­cel­lence 2020 shows that these val­ues and this at­ti­tude are very much part of the cul­ture of Pow­er­Gen.”

Rom­ney Thomas, Chair­man of the Pow­er­Gen Board of Di­rec­tors, stat­ed:

“Up­on my ap­point­ment as Chair­man of Pow­er­Gen in Jan­u­ary of this year, in the midst of a rag­ing pan­dem­ic, the fo­cus on safe­ty is an in­trin­sic part of Pow­er­Gen’s core op­er­a­tions.”

Be­tween 2016 and 2019, the com­pa­ny av­er­aged 2,000 hours of safe­ty train­ing hours, in­creas­ing this to over 7,000 hours in 2020 when pan­dem­ic pro­to­cols had to be put in place. In 2016, when Pow­er­Gen’s safe­ty pro­gramme was for­mal­ly launched, eight HSE field in­spec­tions were done. By 2020, 184 such in­spec­tions were car­ried out.

Pow­er­Gen recog­nised that en­hance­ment of safe­ty had to be based on an on­go­ing safe­ty part­ner­ship be­tween man­age­ment and em­ploy­ees Pow­er­Gen’s mod­el of safe­ty fo­cused on em­ploy­ee col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­put via the Near Miss re­port­ing frame­work and the track­ing of lead­ing and lag­ging in­di­ca­tors.

This al­lowed for the re­port­ing of po­ten­tial and ac­tu­al haz­ards iden­ti­fied by em­ploy­ees, ex­em­pli­fy­ing full en­rol­ment and en­gage­ment in Pow­er­Gen’s safe­ty cul­ture

Mo Ma­jeed, Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer MPII and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Caribbean, re­vealed: “Hav­ing worked close­ly with Pow­er­Gen for over 20 years, I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed the sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in all as­pects of the Health and Safe­ty pro­grammes.”

Ma­jeed al­so not­ed that Health, Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­men­tal (HSE) pro­tec­tion were not a mat­ter of prof­its.

“In fact, it is a cost to the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said to the guests at­tend­ing the vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny.

He added: “Gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty is an ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous busi­ness, where per­son­nel could be ex­posed high tem­per­a­tures, pres­sures, as well as high volt­ages. Marubeni be­lieves that pro­tec­tion of per­son­nel, equip­ment and en­vi­ron­ment is a fun­da­men­tal re­quire­ment of how we con­duct our pow­er busi­ness­es around the globe. The same is true for Pow­er­Gen. As an in­dus­tri­al com­pa­ny, Pow­er­Gen has al­ways put the safe­ty of em­ploy­ees first and fore­most. This award con­firms its suc­cess in this re­gard.”

Close and am­i­ca­ble co­op­er­a­tion be­tween man­age­ment and work­ers led to sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in the safe­ty walk-downs, re­port­ing of near miss­es, and com­plet­ed train­ing hours.

“Our safe­ty mot­to is ‘Safe­ty be­gins with you and it is every­one’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty’,” ex­plained Daren Jadoo, Head of Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment at Pow­er­Gen. “That has worked for us in Pow­er­Gen and, in these pan­dem­ic times, it is al­so a prin­ci­ple that can help us beat the COVID-19 virus.”

The Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion, found­ed in 1858 and in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1949 in Japan, has 137 branch­es and of­fices in 67 coun­tries.

Marubeni Caribbean Pow­er Hold­ings Inc. has part­nered with Pow­er­Gen since 2007.

The Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion, en­com­pass­es a di­verse range of busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing lifestyle, ICT & re­al es­tate busi­ness, for­est prod­ucts, food, agri-busi­ness, chem­i­cals, pow­er busi­ness, en­er­gy, met­als & min­er­al re­sources, plant, aero­space & ship, fi­nance & leas­ing busi­ness, con­struc­tion, au­to & in­dus­tri­al ma­chin­ery, and next gen­er­a­tion busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.