9th July 2015

- The Hindu

Creating safety awareness through play

A play on adopting the safety measures at hazardous industries such as petroleum and chemical units staged as a part of the two-day training programme on ‘fire prevention and protection,’ organised by the National Safety Council, Mumbai, and Tiruchi Chapter, besides the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health here on Saturday, prompted officials to work on a strategy for using cultural programmes for creating awareness of safety at fire-prone factories, particularly the match industries in Sivakasi.

Explaining the salient features of the play, C. Gnanasekara Babu Rao, Director, Industrial Safety and Health, said the directorate would soon work on a programme for creating awareness among the workers of match industries in Sivakasi about the importance of safety measures. He advised B. Alagesan, Additional Director of Industrial Safety and Health, Tiruchi, to furnish the compact disc on the stage so that it could be played among the workers of Sivakasi.

He said a majority of workers at Sivakasi were quite unaware of safety measures and the screening of the plays would have a greater impact on them.

Mr. Alagesan said the play centred around a debate whether it is ‘commitment or gadget’ which contributed to safety applications in industries.

A popular sequence from the Tamil film ‘Tiruvilaiyadal’ was used, in a modified form, for the debate on ‘commitment’ over ‘gadget’ and it ends up with a moral that it is commitment towards safety which is more important than the simple gadget.

S. Prabakaran, Safety Head, Dalmia Cements (Bharath), co-ordinator, said that the play had been staged at various places and safety-related seminars for the past several years.

A team of workers of Dalmia Cements (Bharath) participated in the play.