The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) has reached a sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional bench­mark, of­fi­cial­ly record­ing four con­sec­u­tive years with­out a sin­gle lost time in­jury (LTI).

A re­lease from the com­pa­ny said the mile­stone un­der­scored the com­pa­ny’s ag­gres­sive pur­suit of its En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance (ESG) agen­da and ce­ment­ed its rep­u­ta­tion as a re­gion­al leader in in­dus­tri­al safe­ty stan­dards.

The achieve­ment was the cen­tre­piece of Wit­co’s "Op­er­a­tions Line-of-Sight" event, where lead­er­ship at­trib­uted the suc­cess to a work­force of over 200 em­ploy­ees who suc­cess­ful­ly in­te­grat­ed a "safe­ty-first" mind­set in­to their dai­ly rou­tines.

The re­lease not­ed the four-year streak was not mere­ly a sta­tis­ti­cal vic­to­ry but a re­flec­tion of a deeply em­bed­ded cul­ture of dis­ci­pline and mu­tu­al ac­count­abil­i­ty.

"This on­go­ing suc­cess is pow­ered by our team of over 200 em­ploy­ees, whose vig­i­lance and ded­i­ca­tion en­sure that safe­ty re­mains at the heart of every­thing we do.  Every in­di­vid­ual plays a crit­i­cal role by mak­ing con­scious choic­es that pro­tect them­selves and their col­leagues," the re­lease said.

, Wit­co’s head of man­u­fac­tur­ing, em­pha­sised that the com­pa­ny’s safe­ty record is built on the foun­da­tion of in­di­vid­ual choic­es, adding that safe­ty at the plant is dri­ven by the courage of em­ploy­ees to speak up and the dis­ci­pline to ad­here to pro­to­cols even when un­su­per­vised.

This phi­los­o­phy of "Do­ing the Right Thing" has al­lowed the or­gan­i­sa­tion to main­tain a se­cure en­vi­ron­ment amidst the com­plex­i­ties of a mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing land­scape.

The ac­com­plish­ment did not go un­no­ticed by the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) pro­vid­ed spe­cial recog­ni­tion for Wit­co’s ded­i­ca­tion to work­place health and safe­ty.

Melis­sa Pierre, man­ag­er of ini­tia­tives and pol­i­cy at Am­cham T&T, who al­so ad­dressed the staff at the event, high­light­ing the link be­tween cor­po­rate safe­ty and broad­er eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

She re­marked that safe work­places con­tribute to more re­silient com­pa­nies and, by ex­ten­sion, a stronger na­tion­al econ­o­my. Pierre al­so laud­ed Wit­co’s con­sis­tent per­for­mance as a fi­nal­ist in the Am­cham T&T na­tion­al ex­cel­lence in HSE Awards.

As Wit­co looks to­ward the fu­ture, the com­pa­ny said it re­mained fo­cused on "rais­ing the bar" and aimed to en­sure that its most valu­able as­set—its peo­ple—re­turn home safe­ly every day, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly set­ting a rig­or­ous bench­mark for the lo­cal and re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.