DELEGATES at this week's five-day Heineken International Health and Safety Conference in Accra have paid a working visit to the Achimota plant of Ghana Breweries Limited (GBL).

The delegates were taken round the factory by Mr Emmanuel Owusu, Brewery Manager, and Mr. Henk van Klompenburg, Technical Director, both of GBL, an affiliate of Heineken International and hosts to the conference.

The conference delegates toured departments of GBL, including the brew-house, control room, bottling-lines, quality control, draught beer section and health/safety facilities. They further took the opportunity to interact with the GBL management, supervisors and other staff on issues relating to health and safety at the work place.

Earlier in the week, during the opening session of the conference at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Mr Adebanji praised Heineken International for its many initiatives aimed at ensuring good health and safety at the work-places of its affiliated companies world-wide, including initiatives aimed at fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Work-place safety, Mr Adebanji noted, remained one of the major challenges facing GBL and other industries in the Third World. On the fight against HIV/AIDS, Mr Adebanji disclosed that GBL had carried out various programmes aimed at increasing awareness of the disease among its work force and providing voluntary testing as well as counselling.

The Heineken International Health and Safety Conference brings together medical doctors and safety coordinators from Heineken International affiliate companies around the world.

The delegates and resource persons at the week's Accra conference came from countries such as The Netherlands, Vietnam, DR Congo, Nigeria, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Ghana. They deliberated on topics including Heineken values and principles on health/safety, work-related illnesses as well as risk assessment and evaluation.

Mr Adebanji described the concept of bringing together medical and safety personnel for the deliberations as a worthy exercise and hoped the cross-functional conference would greatly enhance medical, safety and health procedures and practices at the Heineken affiliates.

He specifically urged GBL representatives at the conference to tap into the experiences of their colleagues to address the challenges of inducing voluntary testing and significant behavioural changes within the company's work force.