Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking has been conducting out a counselling programme for its employees to assess the magnitude of their addiction to tobacco and help them quit its consumption. BEST Chief Medical Officer Dr Anil Singhal said that for the past four years, cancer cases in BEST employees had decreased by 90 per cent as they had stopped consuming tobacco in any form, ever since a campaign was launched.
“In 2014, we realised that more than 50 per cent of our employees are addicted to tobacco and initiated a campaign — Tobacco-Free Workplace. Through association with Cipla Health, we are confident we can convince another 7,000 employees to quit consuming tobacco by August 2018,” added Singhal.
In order to mark ‘World No Tobacco Day’, Nicotex has partnered with BEST to make it a tobacco-free workplace.“The association with BEST is one of the steps in aligning ourselves to the national goal of reducing 20 per cent of the tobacco use in the country by 2020 and aim to motivate maximum number of BEST employees to quit tobacco consumption habits”, said Anshul Mishra, Category Director, Cipla Health ltd.
BEST, along with Cipla, plans to conduct tobacco-free awareness sessions in all 26 of its depots. Sources said that selected employees would be sent to the tobacco rehabilitation center at Dadar, and would receive counselling. “More than 3,000 BEST employees have been treated in the last three years, and around 500 employees have been selected for the nicotine therapy,” claimed sources.
BEST Chairman Ashish Chemburkar felt that employees should receive bimonthly training sessions so that they can get rid of the habit. The undertaking’s health department has come up with a mobile app, ‘Tambaku-Mukt BEST’, where tobacco-addicted employees can register themselves and seek help. Around 1,000 employees have registered so far. “Even though we are financially weak at this moment, we are doing our best to focus on the health of our employees. We will keep spreading awareness and make sure our working place is a tobacco-free workplace”, said Sunil Ganacharya, member of BEST.
