We adhere to the safety philosophy of “life comes first,” with our safety management work guided by the “Top 10 Safety Guidelines” to achieve our goal of “Zero Fatality and Zero Occupational Disease”. We are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for our employees and contractors. We strive to prevent work-related injuries and health damage, effectively manage occupational health and safety risks associated with our production and operation to improve our occupational health and safety performance and bring health and well-being to our employees and contractors, as well as the communities in the places where our operations are located.
The Company’s Board of Directors is responsible for making decisions on important safety and health matters. The SPC is responsible for managing safety and health work across departments, and establishing, managing and evaluating the Company’s safety and health objectives and guidelines. The safety and health department of each subsidiary carries out safety and health-related work as required by the SPC. Our responsible health and safety commitment and approach are stated in the Policy Statement on Management of Health and Safety.
On the basis of risk prevention and control, dynamic management, and full participation, we have developed our safety management system led by the Occupational Health, Safety, and Environment Management Guide (the “HSE Guide”)
As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and pandemic control in China is normalised, our primary objective is to protect the health, safety, and well-being of our employees and contractors, as well as to ensure the stability and safety of our surrounding communities.
At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, we set up a COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control steering group according to the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government’s pandemic control measures. It consists of senior management and is led by the Chairman of the Board of Directors. There are an office, a general liaison team, a production, safety, and environmental protection team, a publicity and training team, a material security team, and an emergency response team under the steering group to plan and coordinate the subsidiaries’ pandemic prevention and control work, which forms a comprehensive COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control system. The Company has also formulated the Work Plan for COVID-19 Pandemic Prevention and Control (updated to Version 4 in 2021) as a guiding framework for the pandemic prevention and control work of the Company’s headquarters, subsidiaries, and business partners, and actively launched all-rounded pandemic prevention and control measures according to the local pandemic prevention policies to effectively reduce internal COVID-19 infection risk, so as to ensure that our employees, communities, and operations remained unaffected. In addition, we pay close attention to the mental health of our employees who are affected by the pandemic, launch the collaborative “Sunshine Mindset” programme to check for mental health risks and carry out one-on-one psychological counselling to check if the staff have any hidden psychological problems. During the reporting period, we organised nine seminars on mental health in the context of the pandemic situation to relieve employees’ anxiety and ensure their physical and mental health and team stability.
In 2021, through active control efforts, the Company achieved zero infection in its projects in China; there were only a few controlled cases in some projects outside China. There was strong health protection for employees and stakeholders. Production and pandemic prevention were able to go hand-in-hand.
Focusing on weak links and key issues, we carry out “the theme activity per season and monthly movement” and highlight the prevention of and solution to major safety risks. As a result, we’ve enjoyed “improvement every month and achievement each season”. On the spot, we promote risk control and management featuring “work after risk identification” with “one paper, one certificate and two lists”. Meanwhile, we pay close attention to change management, standardizing risk identification and control of irregular operations involving temporary, sporadic and dangerous ones to ensure all operations are controlled throughout the whole process.
We regard contractors as our important partners in safety work. We integrate them into the Company’s occupational health and safety management system to establish a management model that treats all of us equally, manages all of us in the same way, subjects all of us to the same requirements, and makes all of us better.
In accordance with the Measures for the Management of Production Safety of Contractors, we assess the level of safety management and risks of the contractors and implement a customised plan for each contractor, raise the level of supervision on contractors with high risk level, poor management capability, abnormal staff turnover rate, low staff safety compliance, and frequent accidents, and assign safety supervisors to the individual projects. To improve the level of safety management of contractors, we manage our contractors as a whole to standardise management, training, inspection, assessment, and reward and punishment.
In order to overcome the safety risks caused by human factors and environmental factors at the mines, we have implemented the “Technology for Better Safety” strategy, which involves the use of advanced information technology data plat forms, intelligent equipment, and automated machinery to improve production safety or replacing humans, so as to prevent potential safety and health impacts on employees in the workplace and to enhance the intrinsic safety of our mines.
We developed the “safe information platform for all members in Zijin Mining”, realizing the early warning and forecast of safe production risk and whole-process control. We also actively cooperate with intelligent service providers to introduce intelligent system and equipment into our mines and smelters.