Monrovia, Liberia – ArcelorMittal Liberia has marked 2025 Global Health and Safety Day with safety awareness events for staff in held in Yekepa and Buchanan.
The Chief Executive Officer of ArcelorMittal Mining and Executive Vice President Kleber Silva spoke at the Yekepa event and stressed the need for enforcing the culture of safety to ensure safe working environment for all employees and contractors of ArcelorMittal.
Mr. Silva said, “We must force the culture of safety. Safety is about life; life of ourselves, our colleagues and any other person with us. We must ensure in our operations that our mines, our railroad, and our concentrator meet zero fatality, accident or incident.”
He, amongst other executives of ArcelorMittal Liberia, commended the workforce for the improvement in the work environment without reports of fatality or any troubling incidents for the past months.
ArcelorMittal Liberia’s Chief Executive Officer, Michiel Van Der Merwe, also alluded to Kleber’s statement about forcing the culture of safety, urging the workforce to be proactive in speaking about any hazard, accident, or incident that they will see.
“We want to encourage you all to report, and what do we want you to report? Report incident and accident to make sure our brothers and sisters go home safely. We don’t want to blame people. We want to encourage people to be positive, and we want people to be happy and alive,” said CEO Van Der Merwe.
He added that when people are safe in the workplace and the environment is safe, production comes automatically.
The Head of Health and Safety, Mr. Ahmad Massaquoi, also said in his opening statement, “On this special day, we think about our achievements, our challenges and how we can overcome them by ensuring how our workforce, assets and environment are in a safe condition. We do not want to hear about people getting hurt on the job or disturbed in any way. Let everyone of us here in this hall heed to the pledge of safety to remain healthy and safe.”
Several departmental heads also made remarks, cautioning workers against unsafe acts and emphasizing the need for them to remain safe to return to their families.
“How do we see safety? We must see safety as working or doing anything safely when no one is looking at you,” said Dawie Loots, AML Training Academy Manager.
Estate Manager, Ramses Kumboyah, added that safety encompasses dwelling places as well as the mines, and if the culture of safety can be enforced to achieve zero, employees must learn to keep their homes and surrounding clean.
Report by the Health and Safety Department indicated that ArcelorMittal Liberia has improved its safety culture with an appreciable record. This, Health and Safety HOD Massaquoi, would not have come if employees were not proactive and diligent in ensuring safety in the workplaces.
In Buchanan, the Head of Rail Marco Miranda delivered the special message on behalf of AML CEO Michiel Van Der Merwe.
Miranda highlighted the importance of compliance to safety, promotion of a safety culture, and good teamwork to achieve our safety goal.
For the 2025 Global Health and Safety Day celebrations, a total of 123 persons and a department were awarded and recognized for their outstanding roles in ensuring safety. The categories of the award include Best Paramedic Award, Best Cleaner Award, Best Safety Recognition, Best Guardian Angel Award, Exceptional Performance in Shop Floor Audit, and Best Safety Practitioner Award. The Mines Department was awarded the Incident Investigation and Closure Excellence Award.
