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promoting improved safety performance  
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After many years of careful safety management, Sasol was severely shaken by the safety incident in September 2004 in which ten people were killed at an explosion at our Secunda ethylene plant. Following the series of safety incidents that occurred during 2004, Sasol appointed DuPont Safety Resources to perform a comprehensive safety review of our South African operations. The observations and recommendations emanating from this review, conducted during the first quarter of 2005, formed the basis of a comprehensive group-wide safety improvement plan during the 2005 financial year. An independent review of the implementation of this plan was undertaken in 2006, following which a revised safety improvement plan was developed and is being rolled-out.  
   
promoting improved safety performance
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Building a culture of safety in the organisation  
The conclusion of DuPont’s second report on safety at Sasol, undertaken in 2006, stated:  
   
"The mind-shift on what managing safety really means has clearly started to take place. The results, if measured by injury statistics, are clearly visible. But Sasol must be aware that these improvements must be sustainable and that further improvement is required. Continuous improvement will lead to world-class safety performance."  
   
These positive comments can be attributed to the numerous initiatives that we have undertaken as part of the structured safety improvement plan. These include:  
• emphasising the safety value;
• adopting a safety charter concluded and signed with the trade unions within Sasol;
• orientating executives, from the CE downwards, on appropriate attitudes for zero harm;
• appointing the CE as the chief safety officer, with a duty to personally investigate major events;
• providing refresher training in hazard identification, risk assessment and controls;
• introducing life-saving behaviour awareness initiatives;
• more organised communication of lessons learned;
• clarifying and implementing SH&E roles and responsibilities;
• adopting OHSAS 18001 and process safety management (PSM) as safety management systems and methodology;
• providing skills and capability development in line with PSM requirements;
• improved service provider safety management;
• improving SH&E corporate governance, minimum requirements, behaviour based safety leading indicators; and
• including safety in our incentive schemes.
 
   
Evidence of progress in improving our safety performance  
The recordable case rate (RCR) is a standard international measure for reporting work-related injuries and illnesses. The RCR is the number of fatalities, lost workday cases, restricted work cases, medical treatments beyond first-aid cases and accepted illnesses, for every 200 000 employee hours worked. We measure and report the RCR on a 12-month moving average basis.  
   
The impact of the above initiatives is reflected in the significant improvement in our RCR from 0,93 in 2006 to 0,75 in June 2007. It was particularly pleasing to see that Sasol Gas achieved an RCR of zero for the year, and that most businesses recorded significant improvements in their respective RCRs. While there were 147 fewer injuries in total, it is saddening to report that three service providers and one employee were fatally injured in workplace incidents. This compares with four fatalities in the previous year.

A benchmark of our safety performance against that of some of our peers in the energy, resources and chemicals sectors is provided in this report.

From 1 July 2006 onwards, our RCR includes both employees and service providers, and recordable injuries as well as occupational illnesses. Our targets for this new all-inclusive measure are 0,4 by June 2011 and 0,3 by June 2015. We are defining a safety roadmap to guide us towards meeting these longer term RCR targets.

The RCR is one measure of safety performance. While a useful indicator of current performance, it has the disadvantage of being a backward-looking measure of many individual activities. In itself it is thus no guarantee against future incidents, which require forward-looking measures such as behaviour based safety and process safety management (PSM). Ensuring the effective reduction of the risk of fires, explosions and releases (FERs) of hazardous substances is also critical to our business and the implementation of PSM aims to achieve this objective. Our expectation of PSM is such that the target for significant FERs has been reduced to no more than three per quarter by June 2011.		  
   
Continuing our focus on safety  
During the year, we have undertaken various safety initiatives as part of our comprehensive change management programme. We have approved PSM standards, commenced implementation of an expanded PSM training programme, and approved a revised safety performance incentive. All businesses have implemented their own site-specific safety plans, the progress of which is monitored by their boards as well as the group executive SH&E committee.

Ensuring the safe behaviour of our service providers has received particular attention. We have developed a safety management standard for service providers and are in the process of implementing this standard. The standard includes provision for sanction of service providers who fail to meet specified safety commitments. In future, the requirements of this standard will be integrated into our PSM programme under our service provider standard to further align our efforts.

While we have achieved a new record RCR in 2007, we recognise that if we are to achieve our safety performance targets we will need to continue with a strong focus on developing an appropriate safety culture, climate and mindset of safe behaviour throughout Sasol. Safe behaviours will be promoted through more assertive implementation of behaviour based safety programmes. The contacts afforded by these programmes are regarded as a cornerstone in the communication of matters of safety, as well as other aspects of values-driven leadership.

While we support a no-name no-blame culture for the purpose of learning, we also have to create an attitude of constructive intolerance of unsafe behaviour, and apply appropriate discipline to protect the safety of our colleagues and ourselves.		  
   
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Safety strategy and roadmap  
Over the past two years, the Sasol safety performance was enhanced by the execution of improvement plans. This strategy delivered the results described above, but as we focus on zero harm we are entering new territory where further gains require even greater effort.

To meet this challenge a new safety roadmap is under construction and there will be a major focus on incident reduction and PSM implementation. To support this we need to analyse in more detail all incidents, including potentially hazardous near incidents, to identify common trends and root causes, so that these can be eliminated before they cause harm.		  
   
 
 
 
    
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