Ghana: Bui Power Authority Grabs Five HESS Awards

Ghana’s second largest state power generation company, Bui Power Authority, has won five awards at this year’s HESS Awards night held in Accra, capital of Ghana.

The BPA won four awards while the Chief Executive Officer of the Authority, Mr. Fred Oware won the HESS CEO of the year award.

The awards BPA won are HESS Company of the YEAR, HESS Team of the Year, HESS Manager of the year and BEST Company in Employee Health Well-Being Initiative.

The HESS award is designed to identify, publicly recognise and celebrate outstanding companies for exceptional performance and innovations focused on occupational health, the environment and employee and stakeholder safety and security.

This year’s HESS Awards was on the theme: ‘Recognising outstanding achievements and celebrating business excellence and innovation focused on occupational health, safety, security and environment’.

Commenting on the awards in an interview with energynewsafrica.com via the telephone, Chief Executive Officer of Bui Power Authority, Mr Fred Oware noted that the awards were well deserved “because there are a number of things that we’re always doing to ensure the safety of the plant, workers and entire community to make sure that at the end of the day, we leave the plant in a safe environment.”

Continuing, Mr Oware said every year, the Authority engages medical doctors from the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital to take head office staff through health screening exercises while doctors from the Wenchi Methodist Church Hospital are engaged to do same for the staff at the plant site at Bui and the entire community.

Touching on other measures they adopted which he believed contributed to BPA’s chances of winning the awards, Mr Oware explained that “when the Covid-19 started, we imposed travelling ban on all the staff. Those who were at the plant site couldn’t leave and those who were outside couldn’t come in. From that time till date, we have supplied all the staff and their dependents, as well as the communities around the dam site, essential vitamins to boost their immune system to make sure that even if anybody had the virus, the effects would be lessened.”

Mr Oware said the Authority also increased its medical counseling to staff by educating them on how they could prevent contracting Covid-19 virus and what they could do in case they contracted the virus.

He said they extended this to the members of the communities around the dam and also supplied them with alcohol–based hand sanitizers and soaps to enable them observe the covid-19 safety protocols.

According to Mr Oware, BPA also set up a Standing Committee for disease control which monitors Covid-19 situation in the country and other diseases and passed on the information to the staff.

“Every day since the start of Covid-19, we put information on disease control and everything we can pick from anywhere,” he said.

Apart from the efforts the BPA made in protecting the workers and the residents around the dam site, Mr Oware said management also improved on their maintenance culture by making sure that the Bui reservoir, equipment of the plant and its systems were properly maintained to avoid breakdown.

He believed those steps the Authority took caught the attention of the HESS Awards organisers and nominated BPA after doing their independent assessment of the measures put in place.

He commended the staff of BPA for supporting management in all the steps they initiated and adhering to the Covid-19 safety protocols management put in place for their safety.

“As a leader, I’m grateful to my staff for their contribution, having been through this whole thing and taking instructions and following whatever we said we were going to do and did not expose anyone to danger.

“My staff has done really well and I’m grateful to them. I thank them most sincerely and I want them to know that I appreciate them,” he said.

Source: www.energynewsafrica.com