Covid-19: Nestle Malaysia ready to share industry best practices
15 Jul 2021
Nestlé Malaysia is willing to share industry best practices with fellow manufacturers and those interested to keep Covid-19 infections to a minimum among industry employees.
Chief executive officer (CEO) Juan Aranols said the offer to share industry best practices comes after the nutrition, health and wellness company achieved a consistent positivity rate of below 0.1% of its entire workforce of 4,500 people in the country.
“Our screening procedure enables early detection before positive cases enter the workforce in our factories,” he told a media briefing after conducting a tour of its facilities, highlighted by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in its engagement with industries, here today.
“We do not speak for the industry, but from what we have done and the effective results that we have shown you, we maintain that testing is crucial.
“In Shah Alam, we have three plants: Shah Alam Complex, Batu Tiga and Sri Muda, and the Nestlé Distribution Centre, with a total workforce of 3,000 people.
“On a daily basis, 1,500 to 2,500 employees undertake at least one swab test per week. Depending on the person’s risk assessment, they are tested more than once a week, even daily,” he said.
Aranols said the company, with its mostly Malaysian workforce, does have contractors that hire foreign workers but they need to comply strictly with proper living conditions to avoid Covid-19 infections.
“We have checked the housing conditions of those workers and they are in the right living conditions.
“If they are not, they will be infected and this would have an impact on our operations, so we need to take responsibility for the entire supply chain,” he said.
The CEO also said it was important to keep people safe and, at the same time, keep operations going so as to enable its food products to reach the people.
“This is a tough year. We have to do this and we all have our responsibility to contain the virus.
“The Public-Private Partnership Covid-19 Industry Immunisation Programme (PIKAS) is an important programme that enables everybody to be vaccinated,” he said.
The objective of this public-private programme is to facilitate the government’s efforts to accelerate vaccination for the rakyat and achieve herd immunity by increasing the vaccination uptake among the Malaysian workforce and reduce the number of Covid-19 workplace clusters.
Aranols noted that PIKAS is the only solution to defeat Covid-19 and the initiative would protect the well-being of employees and consequently help expedite Malaysia’s economic recovery.
According to the company, from the start of this year to July 13, Nestlé Malaysia had conducted more than 300,000 Covid-19 tests and it had spent about RM100 million on pandemic-related control measures since the outbreak began in February-March 2020.
Source: Bernama
