Overview
Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) promotes a safe and healthy work environment acknowledging that it is critical for the safety and well-being of it's employees. The Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Department consists of three sections: Safety, Medical/Health and Emergency Response (ER). Each of these sections is led by a Suprintendent and the department is headed up by a Manager.
Safety
The Safety section is responsible for the following functions: safety training which includes site induction, Courage to Care, safety awarenesss training, site driving permits and renewal of PNG vehicle and equipment licenses.
- * Incident investigation - all significant incidents and high potential near-miss incidents are investigated using ICAM methodology.
- * Risk Assessment/Management - the team facilitates a wide variety of Risk Assessments across site applying a number of risk assessment tools. This drives the risk assessment culture on the Porgera mine site.
- * Visible Felt Leadership - is a culture that we have developed across site. It encompasses a wide variety of activities from auditing major activities through to daily safety communications.
- * Governance - is a small but dynamic team within the Safety Section that looks after legal compliance, corporate and statutory reporting, document control and management of a number of systems that keep the safety machine running.
Medical/Health
The flagship of the Medical/Health Section is the Mine Medical Center (MMC). This facility is well equipped to deal with a range of trauma incidents and multi-casualty scenarious. It is staffed 24/7 and has a full time compliment of four doctors and six nurses (on rotational roster). The center is well equipped with advanced diagnostic capabilities, including an X-ray and Blood Analysis.
The Mine Medical Center also provides a medical assessment function, ensuring that all new hires undergo a full medical assessment prior to coming on board with PJV. This is followed up with periodic medical assessments targeted at two yearly.
A mobile clinic is also available which visits all business units and provides patient triage and treatment in the work areas. The aim of this strategy is to reduce the time away from the workplace by an employee (s).
The MMC also has the ability to medivac serious medical cases off-site.
Occupational Health
The Occupational Health Section provides a range of health and industrial hygiene services to PJV. These include but are not limited to:
* Employee Injury Rehabilitation
* Respirable and Inspirable dust monitoring
* Diesel particulate monitoring
* Welding fume monitoring
* Wood dust monitoring
* Lead and arsenic monitoring
* Noise monitoring
* Food and safety audits
* Ergonomics
* Optometry
* Audiology
* Physiotherapy
The PJV medical/health team also provides support to the wider district by engaging in riverine patrols and supporting local clinics within the area.
Emergency Response
An Emergency Response (ER) section is responsible for a number of functions that includes providing surface fire/rescue, and underground mine rescue and aviation rescue. PJV has the only private sector Aviation Rescue Team (ART) that supports aviation related emergencies in the country. The team has responded to nearly every major aviation incident in the country since its inception in 1991.
There are also close to 40 volunteers who are active ER team members.They receive training in all the disciplines of emergency response and have actively participated at the national level through the National Mines' Emergency Response challenge held annually.