Health and safety

The health and safety of our workforce is a critical component of our culture. We believe that every employee should go home safe and healthy every day and we are committed to keeping health and safety as a value that drives our overall performance.

We have a comprehensive health, safety and risk management system for our underground and surface mining operations. We also place a strong emphasis on the training, competence, health and wellness of our employees. As part of this, we provide opportunities for learning, as well as reinforcing and monitoring the application of learned skills and knowledge on the job.

We have made a significant investment in procedures and controls, and have implemented various health and safety training initiatives as a means of giving workers the skills and knowledge they need to perform their tasks in a safe and reliable way. We also require all contractors to provide and maintain a safe and healthy work environment, and ask that they meet, as a minimum, our health and safety standards.

We achieved an ABG Group-wide total reportable injury frequency rate (“TRIFR”) of 0.83 for 2012, a 30% improvement on 2011, far exceeding the 10% improvement target set for the year.  As part of our review of health and safety metrics, we have decided to focus solely on TRIFR going forward, given that this captures all injuries in the workplace and thus a wider range of incidents than those captured by monitoring lost time injury frequency rates alone.

Despite improvements made overall in ABG Group TRIFR, we regretfully suffered two fatalities across our operations in 2012. The first involved a contractor employee at Buzwagi who was involved in a vehicle related incident. The second involved an ABG employee at Tulawaka who was involved in a mobile equipment accident. Both of these incidents have been investigated and the necessary corrective action taken.

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Progress in 2012

  • Achieving a 30% improvement in ABG Group TRIFR
  • Developing five critical risk standards to support mining processes and procedures
  • Developing three health standards to combat occupational illness in the workplace
  • Creating a community health management plan for Buzwagi

Priorities for 2013

  • Achieving a further 10% improvement in ABG Group TRIFR
  • Completing the implementation of our existing five critical risk standards and developing three new critical risk standards
  • Developing two new health standards to combat occupational illness in the workplace
  • Completing the creation of community health management plans for North Mara and Tulawaka

Case Study: Visible Felt Leadership and Courageous Leadership

The Visible Felt Leadership and Courageous Leadership programmes are the primary training tools used throughout our organisation to promote health and safety practices. Programme objectives focus on ways in which leaders within our organisation can improve interactions with employees in the workplace in order to promote and teach ABG’s vision and values to help drive health and safety performance. In 2012 we set minimum targets for management interaction across the workforce in order to promote the standards set by these programmes, all of which were largely exceeded.

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