Kochi. The Annual Safety Review (ASR) of Indian Navy for 2019 is being held at Southern Naval Command (SNC), Kochi on 02 and 03 May 19. The ASR meeting, which is being chaired by Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar, AVSM, VSM, Vice Chief of the Naval Staff (VCNS), was inaugurated by Vice Admiral AK Chawla, AVSM, NM, VSM, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Naval Command on 02 May 2019.
During his inaugural address, Vice Admiral AK Chawla observed that the Indian Navy had moved from a reactive safety strategy a few years back to a proactive stance of pre-emption and prevention through a system of training, audits and a vigorous pursuit of risk mitigation. He pointed out that safety and operational effectiveness are mutually inclusive, which means safety provides the organisation the means to minimise loss and consequently enhance the probability of mission success. Therefore, mission success and safety need to be viewed as complementary to each other.
The review was attended by senior officers from Integrated Headquarters Ministry of Defence (Navy), as well as representatives from various Command Headquarters, Area Commanders and Safety Class Authorities at the apex level. The highlights of this year’s ASR were the release of Indian Navy Safety Management Manual and launching of the Indian Navy Safety Website.
In order to inculcate ‘safety culture’ as a way of life amongst naval personnel, the Indian Naval Safety Team (INST) was constituted on 26 Dec 17 at Kochi. The increased speed of operations in the Indian Navy, accentuated by increasing complexities of state of the art systems on board ships, submarines and aircraft, require stringent and utmost adherence to safety. The Indian Navy conducts a safety review at the apex level every year, with the twin objective of providing an opportunity to take stock of all aspects concerning operational and functional safety, identify and initiate institutional steps to reduce the occurrence of incidents and provide an organisational framework to strengthen safety culture in the Indian Navy.
