Kwaku Agyeman-Duah
Chairman of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies (AOMCs) Kwaku Agyeman-Duah says the association remains resolute in its quest to achieve ‘zero-injury’ target in all their filling station outlets.
He said the issue of health and safety are now paramount to the association because of the rise in fire explosions in recent past, which had claimed lives in and around filling stations as well as destruction of properties.
According to Mr Agyeman-Duah, their members have introduced a number of measures as part of efforts of preventing fire explosions including fixing devices that block mobile phones signal, when one attempts to make or receive call at filling stations.
Ghana has recorded more than 200 deaths since 2014 with several others sustaining various degree of injuries in explosions at filling stations.
Speaking at the launch of this year’s Petroleum Safety Week under the theme: ‘Leveraging Technology and Competence to Assure Safety at the Retail Outlet’, Mr Agyeman-Duah said: “We truly believe the cost of non-compliance to safety is more expensive than compliance.”
Consequently, we have fashioned a process to ensure that all levels of our operational endeavours are fully imbibed in safety.”
According to him, this includes peer review auditing to which the requisite logistics are in place to commence in the second half of the year.
“We also have strengthened our communication strategy to include our fortnightly publications of our newsletter. We will like to encourage everyone here present, who has the knowledge, the skill and the motivation to assist us in this bid to make our operation ‘zero-injury’ a success to come on board,” he added.
Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Hassan Tampuli commended the Association for consistently organising and hosting the AOMCs’ Safety Week Celebration which brings together key stakeholders with the objective of educating all on safety matters in the petroleum downstream industry.
“As the chief servant of the regulator of the petroleum downstream industry, the NPA greatly applauds your commitment in the drive to ensure safety in the industry.”
