COVID-19 cases at JSW Steel Vijayanagar Works, the largest single location steel manufacturing facility of JSW Steel Ltd. located in Ballari, which was the largest COVID-19 cluster in the State at one time, came to zero on Wednesday.
Vinod Nowal, Deputy Managing Director of JSW Steel Ltd., praised the commitment by the plant management, employees, and Jindal Sanjeevani Hospital, for the achievement.
“We have successfully managed to flatten the infection curve at our plant in Ballari with no new cases reported in the recent past. This is the effort of concerted efforts and commitment of the leadership team and every employee at the plant. At the same time, we continue to stay alert as the fight against coronavirus has not ended. JSW Steel will continue to keep a close vigil and follow strict safety guidelines issued by the government to keep our employees and communities safe,” Mr. Nowal said in a press release on Wednesday.
During the last few months, JSW Steel undertook several measures to ensure the safety of its employees and the local community at its manufacturing facility in Ballari. It converted its Jindal Sanjeevani Hospital and OP Jindal Training Centre at Ballari into full-fledged COVID-19 Care Centres. It identified the most critical workforce to keep the steel plant operational and ensured the safety of all other employees offering work-from-home facility. It constituted multiple governance committees, headed by senior JSW officials, to ensure complete adherence to health and safety guidelines, including social distancing to control or minimise the spread of infection.
A fever centre was set up within the plant’s premises to check and detect early symptoms of Influenza-like Illness and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection. A team of doctors and paramedics were made available round-the-clock at the centre. A 24x7 helpdesk was set up to assist employees and their family members with information and critical medical assistance through mobile and email including immediate hospitalisation and support to employees infected with the virus. It had also undertaken a massive corporate testing programme to ensure COVID-19 testing of all employees to evaluate and contain infection risks.
“Support was extended to local communities to contain the spread of the virus. The community health monitoring project team of JSW Foundation conducted door-to-door basic screening to record COVID-19 related symptoms of 22,000 people in 5,100 households across seven surrounding villages. JSW Steel continues to undertake stringent safety measures to keep its plants and townships safe through regular sanitisation of offices, shop floors, company vehicles, buses and common areas like ATMs at regular intervals,” Mr. Nowal added.
