The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has commended Dangote Industries Limited for the adoption and implementation of safety standards in the Road Transport Safety Standardisation Scheme (RTSSS) in the company’s operations.

The FRSC Corps Marshal, Dauda Biu, stated this when he hosted a team from the Dangote Cement Plc, Transport Division, led by the Divisional Director of Transport, Ajay Singh, in Abuja.

Biu said the significant reduction in crashes was made possible through the collaboration with his agency and the implementation of some mutually agreed safety standards by the company.

“Notable among this is the reduction of road traffic crashes involving Dangote Transport Trucks through the implementation of minimum safety standards in the Road Transport Safety Standardisation Scheme (RTSSS).

“In order to effectively achieve this success, the FRSC collaborated with the Technical Committee comprising Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), and the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) on speed limiting device implementation in Nigeria,” the FRSC boss said.

He stated that the establishment of an outpost at Dangote Cement Plant Obajana has contributed tremendously to the reduction of road traffic crashes along the ever-busy Obajana-Kabba road in Kogi State.

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Other areas of collaboration with the company, he said, included the establishment of standard and functional driving school, collaboration in conducting professional Road Assessment (Road Safety Audit) for issues of safety concerns on the roads, as well as partnership with the Dangote Drivers’ Training Centre (Driving Range).

Speaking on various efforts by the company geared towards the reduction of accidents involving Dangote Trucks, Dangote Cement Group Head, Transport, Health, Safety and Environment Nigeria and Pan Africa, Ebere Okonkwo, stated that the company adopted several strategies to ensure compliance with Nigeria road safety standards.

She listed the strategies to include improvement of drivers and journey managers’ competence in both HSE and job skills in order to achieve line ownership of safety and safe delivery.

Okonkwo said: “Plans were put in place to improve our maintenance management. Actions were developed to improve and embed an effective journey management system with focus on supervision. We introduced compliance monitoring and reporting such as performing check-ins on drivers while on trips, random alcohol, and drug tests, etc.

“We increased the sphere of influence by showcasing visibly-felt safety leadership at the frontlines through engagements, campaigns, general empowerment to stop unsafe work, behaviours, etc. Consequence management (reward and sanctions); reward for compliance and sanctions for non-compliance was also introduced and behaviours monitored based on criteria, to determine who gets rewarded as a result of safety performance and who gets sanctioned.”

Okonkwo noted that the HSE team embarked on HSSE competence development training for all staff across categories to improve their competence on safety and their influence/supervision skills to the frontline workers (drivers).

She said internal behavioural-based safety training, safety stand-downs to cascade learnings from internal and industry incidents, safety campaigns covering different prevailing risk areas, pep talks by HSE teams and transport trainers across locations, and engagement of shop floor workers by various categories of management were carried out.

On his part, Singh said the collaboration between the Dangote Group and the FRSC was paying off.

The Star