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SOCIAL INITIATIVES
The automotive industry is pivotal to the Indian economy and so are the people. In an attempt to fill this gap between skilled manpower requirements and available talent, we’ve included people as an integral part of our business strategy to deliver sustainable, safe transport solutions. While, technology plays an extremely important role in driving this industry to success, we must not forget our unsung heroes who are the backbone of the trucking world – our drivers. Hence, we believe in playing our role in ensuring the same through various initiatives.
We’ve also come up with a unique “Safety starts with us” initiative that provides road safety training to those who are the most vulnerable to this threat – school children. Under this initiative, children are taught safe traffic behaviour to make them champions of road safety.
Eicher Group’s CSR Programs also help in motivating elders to follow traffic rules. Above all, it instills traffic sense in the younger generation right from childhood so that they grow into responsible adults. We have established strategic partnerships with numerous centres for the education and skill development of the people who matter most to us. While staying competitive is at the core of our business operations, we consider it our responsibility to improve the social conditions of the society we operate in.
our key initiatives
In order to advance the social and economic conditions of the society while dominating the automotive industry and encouraging safe driving practices, VECV has been actively involved in the following:
- Driver Empowerment Initiatives
- Road Safety Initiatives
- Efforts to fight
COVID-19
- Driver Welfare
- Driver Training
- Driver Recognition
Initiative to create an environment where commercial vehicle drivers feel superior experience during transit. These are en-route resting and training facilities for long haul drivers where comprehensive driver trainings are also conducted.
- The main objective of the driver training program is to provide guidance on fuel conservation, behavioral aspects and financial literacy along with personal hygiene.
- Total 6 Driver Pragati Kendras are currently running in association with Indian Oil Corporation and 6 more are proposed.
To ensure driver health and safety, Eicher Driver Care Program for Vision & Hearing provides affordable & advanced quality eye and ear healthcare services to the truck drivers at major transport hubs along the golden quadrilateral and national highway route across the country.
- Launched in 2016, more than 40, 000 drivers have been aided through this initiative till now.
- Eicher also inaugurated six Driver Pragati Kendras operating in key regional centres in India, while the work on next six locations is underway.
- These facilities serve as a holistic avenue to address fatigue management, road safety and promote best practices within the driver community.
Eicher recognizes the critical role that drivers play and therefore has been a pioneer in working towards driver empowerment ever since.
- Eicher’s numerous initiatives over the years have benefited over two lakh drivers and have also helped bridge the demand gap by getting more skilled drivers in the trucking ecosystem.
- These initiatives have been focused towards driver empowerment and upskilling, alleviating the plight of these hardworking individuals and offering them the best-in-class training for optimum levels of safety and productivity.
- To address skill development and empowering livelihoods, Eicher has been running training centres across India and providing skill-based training via low-cost drivers training modules.
- Eicher has eight Driver Training Institutes where a pre-licensing program for new drivers is conducted.
- Eicher also operates twelve Regional Driver Training faculties that train around 20,000 drivers per year. All these programs have targeted more than 2 lac individuals across India.
In an effort to recognise the efforts and selfless dedication, Eicher commemorates Convocation Day at the Eicher Academy for Drivers in Indore every year on the occasion of Driver's Day.
- The drivers are recognised and are certified on completing their pre-licensing driver training programme.
- Eicher’s Pre-license driver training program was introduced in 2018, as one of the company’s key efforts for driver training and empowerment under CSR through Eicher Group Foundation.
- Under this program, Eicher has so far trained 450 drivers. The idea was to develop skilled driver and offer opportunities for recruitment for better and safe transportation.
- The heavy and light commercial vehicle drivers were trained through a structured program and conducted via theoretical sessions, simulator practice, technical exposure and behind the wheel training.
- They also undergo an assessment of driving proficiency by ASDC (Automotive Skill Development Council).
- Road Safety
Education for Students - Mass Awareness during
Road Safety Week - Awareness films
on Road Safety
The school community is a major focus for road safety and Eicher has worked consistently for spreading awareness and mobilising students.
- Every year, Eicher holds a host of initiatives at the inter school level during the Road Safety Week.
- The biggest event involved an inter school quiz competition in association with Indore Police.
- The quiz contest saw participation from over 800 students in Indore this year.
- Moreover, seminar in schools were also held to educate students on traffic signs, curb drill, good road practices and other aspects. School teachers also participated in these programs to mobilise the student community.
Every year Eicher celebrates National Road Saftey Week and conducts various mass awareness programs. This year, Eicher celebrated the National Road Safety Week 2020 with the theme “Sadak Suraksha – Jeevan Raksha”. Eicher rolled out several innovative programs to promote the cause of road safety amongst youth and high school students in Indore.
- We organised a street plays enacted by local NGO teams on strong road safety themes targeting both students and parents and also encouraged them to participate in such skits. > In a first of its kind initiative, Eicher developed a Make Shift Traffic Park in two schools, which helped the company to spread the message of road safety to a larger community.
- The traffic park had indicative traffic lights, zebra crossing, junction, lane markings etc to educate and engage students. More than 600 students were invited to receive the awareness trainings.
- An FM Radio quiz contest was also run every day throughout the week and saw a participation from cross section of general public.
- To engage further with the public, specially commissioned Video Mobile vans with vision screens were parked at major junctions where Eicher road safety films where screened.
- Overall, Eicher was able to achieve a tremendous impact with their road safety campaign by reaching out to over 15700 beneficiaries , motivating and edifying individuals on the issue into making them responsible citizens.
In the past years, Eicher has won several international accolades and recognition for its road safety films. Eicher has been committed to and is actively involved in road safety since 1998, driving safe ecosystem in the country through various safety initiatives. Various road safety films are :
- Providing food to
the affected people - Helping the
real warriors - Supporting the
Corona Heroes
Over 1,50,000 meal packets were prepared and distributed from manufacturing plant facilities of VECV at Pithampur and Dewas.
- Another 4,500 packets per day were further distributed to help the underprivileged and vulnerable sections of the society.
- In association with a local NGO, Action Aid, VECV had already reached out to over 500 construction workers in Bhopal to assist them with food and sanitation kits.
VECV strongly believes in taking care of the driver community and the company reached out to support them through various avenues.
- With the help of IOCL, VECV has provided food, masks, and sanitisers to over 11000 drivers through its Driver Pragati Kendras at 6 locations.
- The company also handed out hygiene kits to drivers at Transport Nagar and Singhu border in Delhi, in association with Dr. Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital, Delhi Traffic Police and Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) .
- VECV also tied up with AITWA to ensure the cabin sanitization of over 1,600+ trucks and had gone ahead with the distribution of masks and sanitizers, at key locations such as Mumbai airport, Delhi airport and Nhava Sheva.
- Additionally, through its company-owned dealerships, VECV is providing food, shelter and medical kits to help stranded drivers.
Keeping customer centricity at the core during these times, VECV had extended warranty, free service, and annual maintenance contracts for two months across all its product portfolio.
- To further support mobility of essential goods on the roads, over 102 EOS (24x7 Eicher On-Road Service) vans were made available for any emergencies, apart from 65 site support teams by Volvo Trucks.
- The state-of-the-art Uptime Centre was run seamlessly for remote diagnostics and service support.
COMPOSITION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY COMMITTEE
- Siddhartha Lal ( Chairman )
- Philippe Divry ( Director )
- Inder Mohan Singh ( Independent Director )