ACC has geared up to support the UN global resolve to promote greater road safety awareness and help prevent incidents involving children on the road.
ACC joined the Holcim Group in its wholehearted support to the #SaveKidsLives campaign to enhance road safety awareness as part of the UN Global Road Safety Week May 4-10, 2015. #SaveKidsLives is planned as a high-involvement campaign across Holcim Group.
ACC launched #SaveKidsLives at its headquarters, Cement House, in Mumbai. The launch witnessed a safety address from Guest of Honour, Geoffrey Currie, Regional Director-Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S), Holcim Ltd, followed by a slogan and drawing competition for children of Cement House employees. National Cadet Corps and campaign volunteers held a Road Show near Churchgate with an aim to highlight the need for road safety particularly for children. The Mumbai Traffic Police was also requested to participate in the campaign in order to generate greater awareness.
In a message to all employees, Stephan Lane, Director-OH&S, has urged all units of ACC – cement plants, ready mixed concrete plants, sales units, corporate and Thane offices – to draw up an activity plan to demonstrate the company?s commitment to work for better road safety for children. He added, "Road safety is in any case an essential part of our logistics excellence objective. This campaign extends the focus to the safety of children who are our most valuable stakeholders."
In Mumbai, a group of ACC employees visited the Rotary Sanskardham Vidyalaya, Goregaon, a special school for deaf children. The presentation was organised through DEEDS Public Charitable Trust, an NGO that works for the hearing impaired which is supported by the company. With the help of a young Sign language interpreter from DEEDS, ACC team addressed 40 students in the age group of 10-14 years on the importance of observing simple road safety rules and practices which would help them and others around them – family and friends – to always be safe on the road. The children then participated enthusiastically in a slogan-writing competition and a quiz on road safety. The UN child declaration on road safety was read out to the children and signed by them all.
Going beyond the UN Road Safety Week, ACC has also decided to make this part of an ongoing three-year commitment to road safety to be implemented as a CSR project. ACC units have already nominated ambassadors from among their employees to steer the programme.
In the course of this campaign, all ACC units have engaged with their key stakeholders who comprise children, parents, teachers, guardians, drivers and the general public. The company?s main engagements during the road safety week took place on May 4, 5 and 6 across all locations.
ACC?s Lakheri cement plant in Rajasthan is the first to implement the UN #SaveKidsLives initiative by organising ?Defensive Driving? training for employees, drivers, schoolchildren and members of the Ladies Club. The recommended itinerary for observing the week includes display of posters, slogans, demos followed by taking ?safies? (interestingly adapted from ?selfies? for this special theme) which will then be posted on Facebook and Twitter accounts.