Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [54]
But the trainees from Bhopal had not come halfway around the world to shop. For each one of them Woomer had prepared a rigorous work program designed to train them for the imminent launch of their factory. “It was an invaluable experience,” said Kamal Pareek, “even if our factory was only a child’s toy compared with the Institute monster that, day and night, went on producing seven times more Sevin than ours would ever make.” Realizing that a ship of a hundred tons poses the same navigational and maintenance problems as a fifty-thousand-ton battleship, Woomer assigned each visitor to the department of their specialty, whether it was handling gases, working the reactors, operating electrical circuits and control systems, producing MIC, maintaining and repairing the installations, manufacturing phosgene, formulating Sevin, preventing corrosion, gestating toxic waste, protecting the environment or even running the company. With on-site instruction sessions, audio-visual shows, training periods in laboratories, and visits to the equipment suppliers and manufacturers, Woomer and his team made every effort to bring about what the American engineer called “an appropriate transfer of knowledge.” Each visitor was instructed to keep detailed notes on what he learned, so that when he returned to Bhopal he would be able to compile an instruction manual for his fellow employees.
One of the most significant transfers of knowledge from which the Indian trainees would benefit was not technical in nature; it was a message of a rather different order. In a curious doctrine that combined realism with what could be read as cynicism, the company’s managers had defined the principles of a methodology they called “Corporate Safety.” “Human beings are our most precious asset,” affirmed the preamble to the doctrine’s manifesto, “and their health and safety are therefore our number one priority.” Some of Carbide’s own employees saw more than a little tension, if not hypocrisy, in such a declaration.
“How could we not enthusiastically applaud such a profession of faith,” Pareek would ask, “when we were responsible for assuring the safety of the first plant to produce methyl isocyanate outside America?”
Carbide’s manifesto set down certain truths, the first being that “all accidents are avoidable provided the measures necessary to avoid them are defined and implemented.” But it was on another more subtle argument that the multinational’s management depended to impress upon their visitors the importance of safety. The formula they came up with was simple: “Good safety and good accident prevention practices are good business.”
“At Institute, Union Carbide’s real emblem was not the blue-and-white logo, but a green triangle inscribed with the words ‘SAFETY FIRST,’ ” stated Kamal Pareek, the future assistant manager for safety at the Bhopal factory.
This obsession with safety manifested itself primarily through the study of a voluminous four-hundred-page manual outlining in minute detail the instructions for emergency procedures to be carried out in case of an accident. It contained information on how to keep personnel continuously informed, on the constant checking of all apparatus, regular practices for safety crews and equipment, as well as the immediate identification of toxic agents, evacuation procedures