OLDM recruit medics to fight COVID-19

Lebogang Mosikare | Friday April 3, 2020 22:22

 

OLDM recruit medics to fight COVID-19

While many governments around Africa including Botswana have imposed lockdowns on their citizens to control the virus, OLDM recently joined the fray by recruiting more medical personnel as one of the measures to stymie the deadly virus, Bontle Maruatona, Corporate Affairs Manager at OLDM has revealed.

The recruitment of more medical personnel was made before the country reported its three confirmed cases of coronavirus and a single death this week.

Said Maruatona: “We are aware of messages that recently circulated on social media regarding the recruitment of medical practitioners by Debswana- Orapa Mine hospital to support during the outbreak of COVID-19. Recruitment at Debswana follows formal Human Resources processes. Thus, any recruitment advertisements are communicated through formal and sanctioned Debswana communication channels.”

She added: “That notwithstanding, Debswana-Orapa Mine following an assessment of its ability to deal with COVID-19, recruited on short-term basis, two doctors, two pharmacy technicians and eight nursing staff to support during these challenging times. This is one of the many measures implemented by Debswana to fight COVID-19. The above recruitment has been sanctioned in line with the Debswana Recruitment Policy and Procedure.”

In addition to the above measure, Debswana recently published a press release outlining its various strategies to contain the spread of coronavirus at its four operations-Jwaneng, Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa.

The release partly reads: “Following detailed risk assessments that we have undertaken, we have various multi-disciplinary teams working hard to address these.

A crisis management team is in place and meets frequently to monitor the situation and take requisite impact management decisions.

Since January 2020, the business has been communicating on a regular basis with employees about the health risks that this outbreak poses and we initiated various counter-measures as developments unfolded over the past weeks.”

Among them, the release adds, is an intensive awareness and information programme that has been deployed to employees on an ongoing basis through multiple communication platforms, which is based on factual information availed by health authorities.

“All visitors to any of our sites are temperature screened and required to declare their travel history. Visitors who have traveled to COVID-19 affected areas and are or have experienced symptoms related to COVID-19 are not permitted to enter our sites unless they provide medical fitness declaration,” the release says.

It adds: “Debswana is currently fully operational and is monitoring the situation closely and is making the appropriate decisions in line with government and health authorities’ advice… .”