At Hindustan Zinc (HZL), people are at the heart of its operations and partners in growth. While ensuring being responsible and thriving workplace, the company has introduced the Group Corona Kavach Policy for contract workforce against COVID 19 across locations in Rajasthan.
The wellbeing & safety of human resources are the top priorities at Hindustan Zinc and give a strong emphasis on people-centric policies enabling long-term growth. The company believes that along with employees, business partners play an equally important role in the growth of the organisation. The Group Corona Kavach policy for contract workers has been taken from New India Assurance, Mumbai that covers more than 25800 contract workforces.
This cashless policy covers all corona related diagnostic charges including pre-hospitalization and post-hospitalization expenses. The company has also provided COVID Death Policy through Go-Digit Insurance company for all the contract workers in the case of unfortunate exigency. Further, COVID Task Forces are deployed to monitor the impact on the entire workforce and families of employees.
Arun Misra, CEO Hindustan Zinc said, “Our people are the biggest assets, and the core of HZL’s business philosophy has always been around the health and well-being of the employees, business partners and communities. While we have arranged all necessary infrastructure to ensure proper care and treatment of anyone affected by COVID, we have gone a step beyond to introduce the Group Corona Kavach Policy for over 25800 contract workforces to support them during these distressed times. This insurance will take care of hospitalization cost as well as compensation in case of any unfortunate event. All contract employees have been brought under this cover”.
Amidst this pandemic, Hindustan Zinc has adhered to the various mandated norms and regulations. The company has also introduced, as a reaction to the pandemic, various measures to change the way of working to ensure a safer working environment for the employees. The Guidelines were drawn centrally applicable for all operations of HZL, with responsibilities defined for business continuity and elimination of risk to the workforce. On the plant side, the company has taken all precautions by reducing footfall at the plant and redesigning the workforce.
Further, the company has arranged resources across its plants and state-of-the-art townships in remote locations of Rajasthan. With rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in the state causing a huge influx of patients in hospitals and acute shortage of oxygen for respiratory treatments, HZL took the initiative of providing oxygen supply to hospitals as a substitute for medication oxygen after due diligence. The company is giving liquid oxygen through cryogenic tankers from its oxygen plant at Rajpura Dariba Complex to RNT medical college at Udaipur.
After providing liquid oxygen to the administration for the treatment of COVID patients, the company has gone a step beyond and is filling 500 oxygen cylinders per day with an oxygen bottling plant set up specifically for this purpose. The company has provided 160T liquid oxygen and approx. 9000 oxygen cylinders to the district administration. This is playing critical role in COVID relief efforts.
Additionally, the company will soon commission a bottling plant with cylinder filling capacity of 1200 oxygen cylinders a day which will help meet further the shortage of oxygen. Hindustan Zinc has initiated a Covid Vaccination drive for employees and their families. The company has ensured over 5000 vaccinations so far for employees, family members, and business partners.
The company has even extended the support to the health Administration, by disinfecting areas by spraying & fumigating with Sodium Hypochlorite solution and providing medical gears like masks, sanitizers & Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs). So far, around one lakh litres of Sodium Hypochlorite solution have been procured for sanitization purposes.