Parijat care and productivity Mantra in India during Covid crisis

The COVID-19 is a public health crisis that has impacted the global economy and led to worldwide catastrophic socio-economic, health and livelihood disruptions. It has adversely impacted all sectors of the economy and especially the manufacturing sector. Food security and agriculture is prime security for any country including India with its population over 1.35 billion people.

To meet the agricultural needs of the country, the crop-protection or agrochemical sector is an important component and plays a vital part in agriculture. India is one of the major agrochemical manufacturers of the world that meets its home requirements as well as exports globally.

In India, the agrochemical industry was also majorly impacted by the initial lockdowns with the entire ecosystem of manufacturing and logistics coming to a grinding halt. As an essential commodity, the challenge for leading agrochemical companies was to immediately get back into production so that farmers have access to crop protection products for the coming agricultural season. The challenges was to create a safe environment for manufacturing and implement risk mitigation measures against the spread of Corona among the immediate workforce and beyond.

The two biggest challenge from the very beginning for companies like Parijat Industries, and still continuing has been to protect against the virus and keep improving measures for containment and spread of the virus to enable production and continuous logistics supply.

Parijat is one of the leading manufacturers and exporters of pesticides from India. It introduced a series of comprehensive measures to protect and keep safe its people, manufacturing sites offices and dealers of the company and neighbouring communities.

With a commitment towards creating a safe and secure environment during Covid-19 pandemic, the company implemented 10 different Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for its manufacturing and a slew of measures for its offices where the density of people was high.

Among the SOP measures introduced were disinfection of the entire premises of its factory, offices including shop floor every day with foggers sprayers, mopping with disinfectants and steam cleaning of toilets.

Every single transport vehicle carrying goods into the plant were disinfected with Sodium Hypochlorite solution and screening of every single person entering the plant were also carry-out to check any sign of Coronavirus symptom.

Special SOPs for the handling of receipt of raw materials and loaders to prevent the spread of corona through surface contamination was also implemented. Continuous manufacturing and free distribution of washable reusable cloth masks, made as per specs of Chief Scientific Advisor, Government of India, was provided to the employees travelling to and fro from home, neighbouring communities, government departments from locations in Ambala in Haryana and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. Other initiatives were the provision of free food to truck drivers as dhabas were shut, continuous disinfection of common areas such as staircase, toilets, canteens, and UV disinfection for all documents.

On the other hand at its Head office in Delhi, considering the high density of people, all operations were shifted to virtual, and work from home, also because Delhi and NCR have been national hotspots, and no one encouraged to visit the office or use public transport. Fortunately, remote from home IT infrastructure was already in place before the outbreak and Parijat was able to make use of this facility successfully.

The company also procured ventilators for any eventuality of an office person or family member needing ventilator and not having access to at hospitals. A pan India effort was launched to equip selected dealers with automatic electronic sanitizer dispensing machines in 5 states. Most important of all, no retrenchments on account of Corona were done by Parijat so that people's livelihoods are not impacted in this difficult time.

The company has been a national award winner for several years from National Safety Council, British Safety Council and Greentech for Safety. As part of CSR, it has also been running a pan India initiative for safe and judicious use of pesticides by publishing and free distribution of publications related to the safe and correct use of pesticides in 9 Indian languages for farmers, apart from a gamut of community development programs for school children in rural areas.

The fight against Corona needs joining hands of all government, public and private sector, and citizens. As a company committed to the cause of Safety and Environment, Parijat pledged to contribute its small part towards the fight against Corona both within and beyond the confines of our organization, says Director Vikram Anand.

Parijat Industries (India) Private Limited, is leading agrochemical manufacturing company with its manufacturing base for formulations in Ambala, Haryana and technical in Cuddalore, its branded products through the subsidiaries are sold across India and in countries of Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America.