From compliance to commitment: India Pharma Inc's safety reckoning

A spate of fatal incidents at pharma plants has exposed critical gaps in workplace safety. With growing ESG scrutiny and global expectations, industry leaders acknowledge that compliance alone isn't enough. A cultural reset—rooted in leadership, accountability, and systemic reform—is imperative to safeguard lives and sustain global pharma leadership, finds Viveka Roychowdhury

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Recent incidents at pharmaceutical manufacturing plants point to glaring gaps in workplace safety standards. In the most recent one, four workers lost their lives on August 21, due to a gas leak at the Medley Pharmaceuticals plant located at Tarapur, Maharashtra. Two more workers were admitted to the ICU of a local hospital.

A few months back, on June 30, 46 people died at Sigachi Industries' Pashamylaram plant in Sangareddy district, Telangana. RPG Life Sciences' Navi Mumbai-based API manufacturing plant reported a fire in January this year.

And these are just the incidents that made the headlines as they are listed companies or the plants are located relatively close to urban India. There would be many more such incidents at MSME pharma plants in industrial parks, as I argue in a recent editorial. (https://www.expresspharma.in/walking-the-talk-on-esg-workplace-safety/)

The bigger companies have bounced back. RPG Life Sciences is reportedly on track to restore the plant with a completion target in Q2. Amit Raj Sinha, MD & CEO, Sigachi Industries commits to “bouncing back stronger”, with the incident on June 30 acting as “a catalyst for a decisive transformation in how we approach safety, process integrity, and operational resilience.”

But the ripples of such incidents reach far beyond a manufacturing plant's gates. After all, much more is expected from the 'pharmacy of the world.'

As a company pioneering a virtual model with multiple cGMP-compliant partners, Hari Kiran Chereddi, MD & CEO, HRV Pharma and New Horizon Global Pharma, perceives “workplace safety as not merely a legal and compliance obligation, but a shared responsibility that defines the credibility of our industry in the future. Such accidents have once again indicated how vulnerable safety systems are, though India is one of the world's top producers of APIs and formulations.”