A week after a gas leak killed six people and injured several others at the Bhilai Steel Plant of Steel Authority of India Ltd, the Durgapur Steel Plant here has taken new initiatives to strengthen the safety measures inside the plant.
“We make relentless efforts to urge people to take safety as a way of life and to ensure safety in workplaces and the employees are being made to give an undertaking to adopt safe practices,” said P K Singh, CEO, DSP.
With the focus on road safety, gas safety and safety in projects and contract jobs, several priorities were firmed up to beef up safety measures in the plant, according to a statement. It included strict enforcement of speed limits of vehicles, monitoring of gas pipelines, regular checking of thickness of pipelines, introduction of increased number of gas detection systems, enforcing use of full body harness and nets for jobs at height, better barricading at the sites of deep excavations, more illumination at project sites, among others.
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The workers for the contract jobs are given rigorous safety training before issuance of gate passes, the steel unit said.
Meanwhile, the government on Friday announced the constitution of a committee to probe the cause of gas leakage in BSP. The Committee, headed by ex chairman MECON, K.K. Mehrotra, with three members – K.A.P. Singh, Former M.D Bokaro Steel Plant, S. B. Mathur, Director-General, Directorate General of Factory Advice Service & Labour Institute (DGFASLI), Mumbai, and Soumitra Tarafder, Chief Scientist, National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur. The Committee will submit the final report to the Secretary, Ministry of Steel by 17th July 2014. The accident was suspected to have been caused by a rupture in a water pipe caused by the backflow of gases.