Jaric – working to establish a culture of workplace safety in SVG

Shanelle Malcolm, a longstanding employee at Jaric St. Vincent Limited (Jaric SVG) has stressed that a main aim of the company is to improve the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) environment in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

A display of Paper Products at Jaric St Vincent Ltd.

“It is not just a company about the money. It is about the knowledge we can pass on so that people can go to work and get back home safely. We help to fight the culture of unsafe workplace practices and we will work until we have a culture of safety here,” Malcolm commented to SEARCHLIGHT, as she congratulated the company for a job well done over its 10 years of operations in SVG.

Malcolm was one of the first employees of the company when they opened their doors in 2015. She worked as the Businesses Services Manager Associate for seven years, and still serves as the company’s Legal Secretary.

Malcolm said it has been a great experience working for Jaric, noting that when the company started it was a new venture in SVG as there were no other ventures offering OHS training.

“I had that passion doing the work because I saw the benefit it could bring, and that is what I like because with this company, it is not the same job every day. Today it can be risk assessment, first aid, defensive driving … the work keeps you on your toes and you can never get bored.

“You get to learn new things and the different training gave me knowledge about the OHS industry. It is a very good job, and I enjoy working there. The directors have a wealth of knowledge and they transfer that knowledge. It is not about we having the information, but transferring it to the people of SVG so we can know about OHS,” Malcolm stressed.

The OHS professional said in SVG, a culture exists where a lot of employees and employers don’t do things safely.

“We do, as we are accustomed to, and that has been one of the barriers we are penetrating but it is still there, so I am encouraging persons to get proper training if they are working in environments that accidents can happen easily,” Malcolm recommended.

She said as persons do tasks repeatedly for years without having an accident, some become complacent, but that does not mean a practice is safe, and it only takes one second for something to go wrong.

“There might be that one day when things might change, so it is better to do it the right way because we don’t know when that practice we do every day might fail and someone is injured,” Malcolm noted.

She said training provided by Jaric allows persons to react to a situation with a certain level of knowledge that can result in a positive outcome.

“The training in OHS is for employees to work from a standpoint of a tried response, an informed response, that you know what to do and not just a flight or adrenalin response where you can get injured. A trained response limits issues,” Malcolm pointed out.

“It is a great feeling to see that a company that started in the recession, went through COVID and is still standing today to celebrate 10 years. I am so happy.”