sustainability report

safety, health and environment

Safety

We acknowledge that an employee’s health and safety is a fundamental right and that a healthy, safe and incident-free working environment enhances productivity and contribute towards everyone’s wellbeing. In this regard the group has trained first aid employee representatives on site.

The group had no major safety and health incidents during the period under review.

Health

The company recognises that HIV/AIDS poses a threat to the employees, their families, communities and to the company and its various stakeholders. It is within this framework that the company adopted a formal policy that defines the respective rights and obligations of the employee and the company.

The company developed a comprehensive strategy and programme of responses, which will manage HIV/AIDS in the company and consequently among employees and their families and surrounding communities.

The objective of the strategy is to minimise the risk to exposure by way of:

• instilling a prevention culture within the organisation;
• providing employees with an opportunity to volunteer to have an HIV/AIDS test resulting in detection of infections; and
• providing medication and treatment to affected employees as the final element to the strategy.

Blue Label Telecoms and its employees agreed to take joint responsibility for the following:

• address the health, safety and wellbeing of employees in relation to HIV/AIDS by implementing HIV/AIDS programmes;
• minimise the adverse effects of HIV/AIDS on operations and the social circumstances and development of employee and consequently their families and communities;
• create conducive environment in the workplace for dealing with the epidemic constructively;
• reduce the number of new infections among employees and consequently their families and communities;
• provide proper information and advice on HIV/AIDS to employees and their families as well as monitoring and evaluating the epidemic; and
• ensure that the rights of employees living with HIV/ AIDS are protected and enforced and that fair process is followed when dealing with HIV/AIDS.

Workplace awareness programmes include awareness activities, condom distribution, voluntary HIV testing, infection control, counselling and treatment.

Environment

Blue Label Telecoms has been classified by the SRI Index as having an overall low environmental impact due to the nature of its business.

Water consumption and use is limited to drinking purposes and ablution facilities and no groundwater is drawn from any of the operations of Blue Label Telecoms.

The group occupies leased properties comprising mainly of office buildings. None of the office buildings are in biodiversity-rich or ecologically significant habitats as determined by the Global Reporting Initiative.

The group has a satisfactory recycling programme. In terms of the programme, waste paper and scrap, including printer cartridges, associated with an office environment are collected by scrap dealers for disposal in an environmentally friendly manner.