Modern mines feature many advanced technologies. But there might still exist gases and vapours in the mine that make the environment unfit for breathing. To prepare for such an eventuality, we installed a Refuge Chamber that acts as a safe refuge for up to 36 hours and provides fresh air in case of emergencies like fire, rock fall and blockage of escape routes in the underground mines. It has in-built oxygen supply, carbon-dioxide absorbing system, first aid kit, stretcher, eye wash and toilet. These Refuge Chambers also have air conditioning, escape hatch with external access handles, indicating lights or strobe and siren to signal emergency situations. During the reporting period four additional 8-seater capacity Refuge Chambers were installed at our RAM-UG site. These are in addition to the already existing four 6-seater and two 20-seater refuge chambers.

Hindustan Zinc conducted tailing dam break analysis at two different locations to ensure that there is no breach. M/s SRK consultants initiated the study at RAM to establish a risk evaluation system, based on the tailings dam failure probability analysis and dam failing consequence assessment. The report has been received and actions are under progress in compliance to the recommendations. Another study was conducted by M/s Golder Associates at Zawar Mines. The action will be based on the recommendations proposed in the report.

In our Silver Refinery at PMP, the transfer of hot molten metal from Noble furnace to Cupel furnace required a certain degree of manual intervention. This manual operation that required handling of hot metal put the employees at great risk. The people engaged were directly in the line of fire while adjusting the launder and hooking up the ladle back hole to EOT crane for tilting. This transfer process has now been automated, thereby making it safer and eliminating potential hazards.

Machine guarding and conveyor safety standard was released to strengthen the conveyor safety at HZL. Multiple training programmes were conducted and actions initiated for identified gaps, viz., guard on tail, head, snub, take up, side guards, ZSS and interlocking, for compliance. An audit was conducted by the conveyor specialist of Martin engineering on two of our sample conveyors. Actions on their recommendations have been initiated to make the conveyors safer and spill free. Apart from that, conveyor inventorisation and audit was conducted through our conveyor committee, a standard checklist and score card developed, line management accountability fixed, and spill free conveyor implementation was started across all units.