OREANDA-NEWS. Tata Housing and the National Safety Council of India will jointly promote the cause of environment, health, and safety at various forums and events involving the real estate industry

This is a first of its kind initiative by a real estate company to raise the bar in occupational health and safety and aims to improve occupational health standards at construction sites

Mumbai: Tata Housing, India’s fastest growing real estate development company, has signed a MoU with the National Safety Council of India (NSC) to create awareness and promote the cause of environment, health and safety (EHS) in the Indian real estate industry. This agreement represents Tata Housing’s persistent efforts to make EHS rules and regulations a priority for the real estate industry.

The MoU was signed between Brotin Banerjee, MD and CEO, Tata Housing, and VB Sant, director general, NSC. The key objective of the MoU will include streamlining exchange of technical expertise between two organisations and to collaboratively work towards making EHS a norm for the real estate industry.

On signing the MoU, Mr Banerjee said, “The Tata group being a pioneer of employee welfare approach in India, EHS naturally ranks on top as one of the group’s core philosophy of doing business. In line with the group’s ethos, we at Tata Housing are looking at building the most effective approach for building an EHS-conscious industry. We are partnering with NSC to institutionalise occupational health standards which will help to inculcate a safety culture within the real estate sector.”

Mr Sant commented, “Construction is considered as one of the most risky industries when it comes to occupational safety, and the rate of fatal accidents is about four to five times than in manufacturing. A recent research suggests the average fatal accident frequency rate in Indian construction sector is 15.8 for 1,000 employees as against 0.23 in the US.

Through this MoU, NSC, along with Tata Housing intends to ensure that compliance of health, safety, security and environment regulations is on a sustainable level and not a one-time practice. We endeavour to achieve these objectives by propagating these messages through training modules and educational elements such as training videos, onsite physical training, etc amongst lakhs of construction workers working across construction sites all over India.”

Some of the initiatives which will be undertaken include co-production of multilingual high impact EHS films and other training aids customised to workforce requirements, development of an EHS audit rating system for real estate projects, etc. In addition to this, the importance of environmental health and safety will also be propagated through various events and forums.