Lafarge Mahaweli Cement concluded its Health and Safety Month 2015 with a number of activities held at its factory premises located within the Colombo port.  

The theme of this year’s Safety Month, which was in line with Lafarge’s global best practices on secure operations, was ‘Keep learning - Committed, open, uncompromising’ with special emphasis on zero accidents and a firm commitment towards engaging and caring for one another. Head of Health and Safety Athula Karunanayake, speaking at the event celebrating an entire month of concentrated thematic activities, said, “Health and safety has always been our first priority and what we have achieved during our journey to become a world-class company in the industry is phenomenal.”  

Like all key stakeholders of Lafarge Mahaweli, employees and their children were also given the opportunity to actively participate in the health and safety month by being part of the ‘Good practices and safety at home’ internal competition where their ideas on health and safety within the home were accepted and judged according to competition guidelines. The best ideas and concepts received special awards. The first, second and third places in this competition were won by Janaka Samarasinghe, Chanaka Lakshman and Indika Munasinghe. 

Children who expressed their ideas in the art form were awarded for their creations and the winners were Imani Munasinghe (age group – three to five), Sithum Sugathadasa and Andrea Senevirathne (age group six to nine), Binuthi Nethusa, Dakshita Perera and Dinuka Bandara (age group nine to 10), Thevni Karunanayake, Nitini Bandara and Lakshan Perera (age group 10 – 14).  Managing Director Anurag Kak addressing the gathering at the event that ended another successful safety month said that Lafarge Mahaweli had achieved a total dust-free environment at their premises and encouraged all their stakeholders to strive towards practicing the world class health and safety standards. 

Karunanayake reiterated the importance of achieving all these goals and thanked employees and contractors for their contribution, without which they could not have made it the successful initiative it was. He said that by keeping to the guidelines and raising the bar every year, they were getting closer to placing Lafarge Mahaweli on the global best practices map for health and safety.