Pakistan Cement Industry on the Safety Bandwagon

To many of the bigger companies in the global cement market, like Seament Holding, safety regulations aren't new news. But believe it or not, many countries haven't had significant regulations put in place until recently. The same way many of these companies are now becoming concerned with the environmental impact of their productions, many are making serious adjustments to their standards for safety now, too.

This is definitely the case in Pakistan. In response to the recent Baldia Town factory fire, many industries are looking at their safety regulations with much more scrutiny. All members of the Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association signed a MOU with Lafarge Pakistan Limited to ensure that all the plants in the country are updated to meet new standards for health and safety.

The industry doesn't have a set of international standards, which is why the APCMA looked to Lafarge for assistance. One of the Lafarge chairmen recognizes the importance, acknowledging that in a cement factory there are over a million moving parts. He argues that it's not necessarily a carelessness or a monetary concern that contributes to the lack of safety standards, but more so a lack of awareness. No business owners would want to put their employees at risk, but it took an event like the factory fire to realize the weight of the importance of these standards.

The CEO of Kohat Cement acknowledges that updating factories to be safer and more health-conscious is definitely costly; however, it's no price to pay in comparison to the lives and materials lost in a serious accident such as the fire. He also notes that most plants have thousands of employees, most of which are at a very low level of education, which could make the risk even greater.