Minister for Labour, Employment and Factories Pithani Satyanarayana on Thursday ordered safety audit for all industries once in six months.
He was addressing a press conference along with HRD Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao after a two-day collaborative conference on ‘Chemical safety and disaster mitigation in pharma industry - challenges and opportunities’, which concluded here.
Responding to a suggestion made by the HRD Minister, Mr. Satyanarayana ordered the regulatory agencies, including Factories Department and AP Pollution Control Board, to ensure third-party audit.
Admitting that accidents were occurring at regular intervals at Jawaharlal Nehru Pharma City, HPCL, and other industrial units, he said, henceforth, clearances would not be given without getting approval on safety precautions from various agencies.
Criminal cases
Disclosing that out of 19 accidents that occurred in the pharma sector in Visakhapatnam last year, criminal cases had been registered against 16 managements, he cautioned that the government would not spare them if their negligence was found as the reason for any accident.
Mr. Satyanarayana also conceded the long-pending demand of the pharma industry to set up a skill development institute exclusively to meet the requirement of the pharma units spread over Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam, and Vizianagaram districts. He said the government would establish a hazard analysis laboratory in Visakhapatnam for assessing hazardous characters of material, including powders, for the benefit of the MSME sector for enhancing process safety.
He said embedding safety culture was a real challenge and appealed to the managements to partner with the government in achieving zero accident by constantly monitoring the implementation of world’s best practices in safety management.
