The theme of worker safety and health is a key pillar of Itaipu’s corporate education. Thus, the organization seeks to promote a safety and health culture in the workplace, through educational activities, reflection and awareness about caring for life, committees, commissions and programs.

Among these actions, the Internal Week of Occupational Accident Prevention stand out, where there are lectures, workshops, courses on safety-related issues and quality of life and abandonment simulations. The theme chosen to be tackled in 2015 was “Traffic”, based on a statistical analysis of accidents in Itaipu that identified in the previous year 33% of cases related to traffic.

During the year Itaipu has also promoted work safety courses among employees and contractors, as well as developing security reports with recommendations to eliminate conditions or unsafe practices that could lead to accidents, conducting inspections at different venues of Itaipu, vehicles and fire extinguishers and distribution of personal protective equipment to employees, apprentices and visitors in order to reduce and minimize the effects of exposure to occupational hazards.

Itaipu conducted two major structuring actions for the Work Safety area: standardizing training for Brazilian and Paraguayan employees relating to work at height (Regulatory Standard NR-35), confined areas (Regulatory Standard NR-33) and electricity services (Regulatory Standard NR-10) and the remodeling of the work accident communication and record process using the Kaizen methodology, which resulted in significant reduction of the time to perform these records.

At Itaipu, hearing problems are a major occupational hazard, so the company keeps the Hearing Conservation Program that acts preventively and regularly performs audiometry tests. There is also the Occupational Health Medical Control Program and Reviver Program, which work in the prevention and treatment of diseases and promote quality of life through physical and educational activities. In Foz do Iguaçu and Curitiba, 76% and 68% of employees respectively, participated in at least one action performed by Reviver in 2015.

The Integration Seminar is an event for employees and employees of companies providing outsourced services that work in the binational for more than six months, performing technical maintenance services (directly or indirectly linked to power generation), technical support (not connected to the power generation, as security agents, painting, building renovation, building construction) and support (cleaning, stevedoring, gardening, restaurants), among others.

At the seminar lectures are held on environment, health and quality of life, work safety and security, in order to expose the worker to the rules and corporate culture and minimize risks to their health and physical integrity in the performance of work. In 2015 it was possible to increase the participation thanks to the awareness among the contract management areas.