The Institution of Engineers’ Chemical division organised a national-level seminar, ‘All India Seminar on Occupational Hazards in Process Industry: Safety in Design and Operation’, on Thursday and Friday.
Speaking on the occasion, P K N Panicker, former president of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, emphasised on the need to maintain safety standards in industries right from the designing stage. He also spoke about different ways of approaching a problem and encouraged the budding engineers to be more innovative.
Referring to the 1984-Bhopal incident, he said, “Had storage levels been reduced at the Union Carbide plant, a disaster of that magnitude could have been averted.”
“Mind catches words when said in a positive sense,” said chief guest K R S R Krishnan, vice-president of Petrofac Engineering and Consulting Services India, elaborating the HSSE (Health, Safety, Security and Environment) in the chemical industry.
Explaining the importance of safety integrity studies and reiterating the crux of this seminar while delivering a lecture on environmental safety, he said Indians had an habit of spoiling good things very easily.
According to Krishnan, human error is the major cause of a disaster and it is rampant as people do not care for personal safety. He began his talk on an interesting note by saying “Chemistry is very important since no other subject is talked about when it comes to two people.”
He also launched a Technical Volume journal at the event. Chairman of the Institution of Engineers T M Gunaraja announced the schedule for the Engineers’ Congress which is set to be held on December 20 and 22 at the Leela Palace in the city and added that President Pranab Mukherjee was expected to inaugurate the congress.
The two-day seminar witnessed a modest gathering of nearly 100 students from various colleges across the city including Sathyabama University, St Joseph’s Engineering College and SSN College of Engineering. The seminar had five sessions of paper presentations and lectures by eminent technocrats on both days.