News
Monday, January 28, 2013
Sustainability of corporate social responsibility urgedKARACHI: Pakistan Institute of Corporate Governance (PICG) held its annual Conference on Sustainability Reporting, Corporate Social Responsibility and Governance at local hotel.
The Conference recognised PICG certified directors through the Director Training Programme.
Fuad A Hashimi, President & CEO of PICG opened the Conference. He gave a snapshot of PICG's engagement with its corporate partners. Almost 600 people have been inducted in to PICG's director training programme out of which 361 are certified directors. PICG is also working towards introducing gender diversity on boards up to a target level of 35 percent. He said governance and sustainability were interrelated and companies needed to leverage good governance to create long term sustainable value for their business.
The program started with a keynote address by Dr. Tilo Klinner, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany. Dr Klinner is keen to promote infrastructure development and alternative energy exploration in Pakistan in collaboration with German firms. He said there was a time in Germany was a 'commissions based' society. But the creation of a well documented economy gave German corporations the impetus to be transparent and disclose full information.
He said companies must look towards maximizing not only profits but also sustainability and fairness to all stakeholders.
He gave the example of the BASF plant in Karachi which has developed an innovative solution to clean its industrial water to make it usable and supply it to the urban community around the plant. He also mentioned the company driven vocational training initiatives taken by the German Consulate in Karachi, to be extended to other big cities in Pakistan.
Syed Asad Ali Shah, Senior Partner Deloitte Pakistan, presented on the use of sustainability reporting frameworks including the GRI Framework and the IFAC Sustainability Framework 2.0. Mr. Shah told the audience that 19 companies out of the KSE 100 are reporting on sustainability and social responsibility. Out of the 19, 10 issue dedicated comprehensive Sustainability Reports using their GRI frameworks.
Nadeem Naqvi, Managing Director KSE, stressed the role of community in green development. He said we need actual penalties to enforce change, to engage business in the process of governance and sustainability, and to use electronic and social media to create public awareness around these issues. He said businesses needed to make a decision as to how far they are willing to go to sell their product. The SECP intends to introduce aligned mandatory reporting frameworks to ensure a step change for reporting by public listed companies on their environmental and social impact.
Guenter Zwickl, CEO Siemens Pakistan, told the Conference how sustainability forms an important part of Siemens' culture and 'is in the DNA of every Siemens employee'. He said the supply chain is a focal point of Siemens' sustainability plan since it is the supply chain that creates the biggest environmental footprint related to the effective management of raw materials, energy, water and waste.
He said an important step towards Siemens' sustainability is that the company is curbing graft and corruption within the organization and moving towards a rigid compliance
system. nniCourtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk