For the 14th consecutive year, Eagle Insurance Company will conduct the Poson safety campaign with the support of Sri Lanka Police, Navy and the Life Saving Association by utilizing 365 professional life guards.
For the 14th consecutive year, Eagle Insurance Company will conduct the Poson safety campaign with the support of Sri Lanka Police, Navy and the Life Saving Association by utilizing 365 professional life guards. This campaign aims at safeguarding the lives of devotees, from drowning when bathing in nearby reservoirs. In addition Eagle will also launch a multi-media public awareness campaign that would highlight the need for people to comply with basic safety rules.
Eagle expects approximately one million pilgrims to visit Anuradhapura and participate in this year's religious Poson activities. Thus Eagle will initiate a massive public awareness campaign prior to and throughout Poson to advice people against using unsuitable bathing places and highlighting the need for people to act with extra caution when bathing in tanks.
Eagle has already put up large billboards and warning signboards indicating unsafe-spots that should be avoided for bathing while guiding pilgrims to safer bathing areas. Leaflets, in both text and picture-form, will disseminate practical information on maintaining proper safety procedures; and about 100,000 fact-sheets will be distributed near major tanks and at official-monitoring terminals at selected locations before entering Anuradhapura. Banners will be displayed at locations that provide a broad view, drawing attention to the dangers of bathing at unprotected places.
In addition to the demonstrations on rescue maneuvers and lifesaving tactics that will be conducted by professional lifeguards during the campaign period, they will also be equipped to provide required advice and information to those wishing to obtain it.
In 1993, Eagle in collaboration with the Life Saving Association, police department and the navy initiated the Poson safety campaign, which has continued ever since. This project has helped in reducing the rate of drowning victims during the Poson season to nearly zero. Through the committed efforts of Eagle, this campaign has so far helped rescue more than a 125 pilgrims as of 2006. Last year, the campaign was hailed as very successful, where 9 pilgrims were rescued.
The Eagle Poson safety awareness campaign is part of the company's comprehensive CSR strategy. At Eagle, being ethical and socially responsible is a way-of-life and is a fundamental core value of the company, which Eagle champions ardently.
Eagle's CSR initiatives vary from encouraging excellence through Eagle Higher Education Scholarship Awards, to Eagle Samana - Creating an Equally Abled Society to Inculcating Safety Awareness throughout the nation.
In recognition of Eagle's commitment to CSR the Company was ranked among the "10 best corporate citizens of Sri Lanka" for the third successive year, presented by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Eagle was also ranked Asia's number one for CSR in the industry by Asian Insurance Review.
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For further details please contact:
Nishanthi Gunewardena
Telephone: 2310078
Notes to editors:
In February 2006, the Aviva group acquired a majority stake in Eagle, with National Development Bank remaining a significant shareholder. Aviva is the world's oldest insurance group, with a history dating back 300 years to 1696. Today it is the world's fifth-largest insurance group and the biggest in the UK. The group has 59,000 employees serving 40 million customers worldwide with Sterling Pounds 364 billion assets under management.