Sustainability report

ACTOWER is conscious of its responsibility to contribute to government’s initiative to enhance wealth creation in South Africa and Africa at large and commits to use sustainable business practices as a foundation for sustainable growth.

ACTOWERS’ Code of Business Ethics, policies and practices are underpinned by good corporate governance and support the following social imperatives:

• Environmental conservation and preservation
• Health and safety
• Quality
• Broad-based black economic empowerment
• Social investment

Environmental conservation and preservation
ACTOWERS has committed to not only focusing on environmental issues, but to be actively involved in playing our part in attaining a high level of environmental sustainability.

As part of our commitment we have employed a new Environmental Manager with focus on ensuring that all our activities in all work areas are analysed and addressed by way of a documented action plan that mitigates or disposes of any negative impact our activities may have on the environment.

ACTOWERS is developing and implementing an environ-mental management system in line with ISO 14000 that documents our policies and procedures that supports the consistent adherence to sustainable and beneficial environmental management practices.

Health and Safety
Health and Safety systems are continuously evaluated, modified and remodelled to meet the ever-changing demands of both our geographical and functional activities.

Systems include hazard identification processes, ergonomic studies, safe work procedures and policies that are all electronically documented in user-friendly systems with easy access to all users. Continuous audits, both planned and ad hoc, ensure that systems are implemented. Functional managers and supervisors are empowered and held accountable for ensuring that our systems are suitable to prevent any harm to our employees and that the systems are entrenched in our every day execution of our tasks. ACTOWERS has a zero tolerance policy for non-conformance to Safety, Health and Environmental (“SHE”) systems.

Besides complying with legal compliance, ACTOWERS is committed to a ‘no harm’ approach and provides a safe and healthy work environment for all employees in support of this commitment.

Quality
Since receiving our ISO 9001 Certification in 2009 we have had several maintenance audits by the South African Bureau of Standards (“SABS”) with satisfactory reports on all occasions. The systems are becoming well entrenched in the organisation and our next objective is to merge all management systems related to SHE as a fully integrated system. ACTOWERS understands and values the importance of having well qualified people working to well defined systems to reach verifiable and measurable objectives. To this end, ACTOWERS is implementing a performance reward system across the entire Group where levels of service, excellence of outputs, teamwork and customer satisfaction would be the minimum performance parameters that will be evaluated.

Employees are encouraged to log all customer complaints and this provides us with an excellent opportunity to correct issues in our organisation that may lead to breakdowns in relationships with our customers and other stakeholders.

Our quality control activities have been expanded to ensure that any process defects are identified before it leaves our premises. Where such issues occur, production and engineering evaluates the root causes for the occurrence and corrective and preventive measures are taken.

Broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE)
ACTOWERS takes cognisance of the Codes of Good Practice on BBBEE by engaging in practices that support the upliftment of previously disadvantaged individuals in South Africa.

On 15 February 2010, TisoGroup increased its interest in ACTOWERS to close to 32%, making them the largest shareholder of the company to date.

Africa Cellular Towers Annual Report 2010 19 Our quality control activities have been expanded to ensure that any process defects are identified before it leaves our premises. Where such issues occur, production and engineering evaluates the root causes for the occurrence and corrective and preventive measures are taken. Broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) ACTOWERS takes cognisance of the Codes of Good Practice on BBBEE by engaging in practices that support the upliftment of previously disadvantaged individuals in South Africa. On 15 February 2010, TisoGroup increased its interest in ACTOWERS to close to 32%, making them the largest shareholder of the company to date.

A BBBEE assessment is currently under way by Simunye Resources CC. Over the last 12 months, much effort has been given to implement and execute sustainable programmes that would improve ACTOWERS’ ranking on all BBBEE scorecard elements. The indications so far point to the assessment being at a Level 5.

Social Investment
The sustainability of the telecommunications and power supply industries is dependent on the development of skills and transfer of knowledge. ACTOWERS provided in-service as well as external course training to 128 employees in the fields of, inter alia, machinery, ISO 9001 applications, health and safety as well as rigging skills, during the year. Many of the trainees are taken on as permanent employees once their training is complete.

The Group is pursuing the implementation of customised mentorship and development programmes that would be aligned to the individual’s personal goals and career path while enhancing the talent pool in the Group.