We interviewed Daniela Lopez, who is responsible for occupational health and safety, and Pablo, who is responsible for human resources.
Daniela Lopez is an assistant in occupational health and safety and carries out all the work within the company Pensilvania Gold & Mineral for the welfare and safety of all workers.
Pablo Ramirez is the director of Human Resources and is the person in charge of the contact with the new people joining the company
What does the company do for the workers?
“The company carries out a series of activities and the main factor is the safety at work system, as this is a system that goes in stages, so one leads to the next.
So within that system we have many activities to prevent occupational diseases, accidents, incidents and all the factors that directly affect workers.
We carry out activities such as active guidelines, training, provision of personal protective equipment, medical examinations of workers when they start work periodically and when they leave.
We also look at the diagnosis of the conditions of all workers”.
What is the process of hiring workers?
“First of all we have to use different means to get the vacancy, we try to ensure that this vacancy is mainly in the area where we are, in the area of influence, to give the people who live in this area the opportunity to have access to work, a decent and well-paid job
This is done through different platforms, whatsapp, radio spots and then the process begins when we need unskilled labour, when we need a more professional, qualified labour force, we try to use different platforms and also through the compensation funds that have different employment exchanges.
These employment exchanges send us candidates with certain tests and certain processes that can be coupled to the profile we are looking for and from there we begin to do the interview process and also some tests to choose the best candidates for the company.
After all this, the person starts working, starts to work and in this part we do all the affiliations to the different systems, we are talking about social security, which includes EPS, ARL, pension, family compensation fund and all these is the first part so that the worker can start working with us”.
Medical visits to workers
“Normally we schedule a medical examination day for the specialists to come directly to the company, so on that day we carry out the medical examination day with all the workers and thus avoid them having to go to the city.
It is important for the company that they come directly to the company and carry out the whole day of medical examinations”.
Safety at the mine
“We mainly consult different databases of the Comptroller’s Office and the police in order to find out about the background of the people who are going to work with us.
Courses for workers
“For example, for people who work at heights, which is quite a high risk, they have to be perfectly trained, so the company brings the trainers directly to the workplace.
In this case, this month we had a training session with 20 people, they were trained theoretically and also did practical training, which is very important because the company is giving the opportunity for these specialists and instructors to come directly to the organisation.
We also do safety courses such as fire brigade, fire and evacuation. We have an emergency brigade, which is trained in different topics such as first aid, fire, rescue and evacuation, so the idea is that these 25 people have knowledge of all the topics, if some of them are on break then the other person can help.
Today, for example, what we had in particular was a course on stress prevention. It is very important to know about these topics because workers are exposed to a series of factors, whether they are extra-occupational or intra-occupational, and obviously if they have problems at home with their family or if they have problems, let’s say, within the company, it is important to know about them”.
How does the pension system work?
“In high-risk jobs they have a special pension, in which they contribute 20 years of work and have already retired, they don’t have to wait to reach a certain age like other workers who have another pension system.
How does the company defend workers’ interests?
“Within the company we have two committees that are very important for the management system and obviously for the workers.
The first committee is called COPAS, it is a group of workers who meet monthly to look at health and safety issues at work, let’s say where we are failing, what we can improve and many things that they have as suggestions, so they will make them known at these meetings.
We also have another one which is the “coexistence at work” committee that we meet every three months or earlier if something extraordinary happens, where we talk about, let’s say, everything about harassment at work, if suddenly it is happening in the company, problems between colleagues, we bring harassment between the director and the worker or vice versa.
What we do is try to take the necessary measures and an improvement plan to solve them, everything we have talked about so far is what we have to comply with by law, but I know that we do much more.
There are also different programmes that we have already established within the company, in fact we have an annual budget for all these activities, including birthday celebrations for all the workers, special celebrations such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
Agreements are also made with other companies, in this case agreements with banks or cooperatives to try to encourage workers to save and also have an approach to access to credit, whether for housing or free consumption to get different things so we help workers to save, because in Colombia this is a problem.
At the moment we are implementing an emergency plan and the ideal is to finish it and share it with all the workers and also when there are visitors, for the contractors and for everyone so that they know if they are on the company premises if something happens what we are going to do, what measures we have, what equipment we have and how we are going to react in case of emergency”.
Here ends the interview where we have been able to learn how the company engages with workers to create a safe and good environment for them and the performance of the projects.
