Social Responsibility is Procter & Gamble’s Business Goal – Kumar

The Managing Director of Procter & Gamble West Africa, Manoj Kumar has said that the multinational household products company has no other goal than improving lives wherever its products are being distributed. According to him, his company’s approach to corporate social responsibility is different from the way many other corporate organisations view it.
He said this while fielding questions from journalists at a media interactive session which held at Jade Gardens, last weekend, during which he unveiled the plan of the company to build a new manufacturing plant at Agbara to complement its factory in Ibadan.
According to him, in conceptualizing every product, P&G first of all determines the different ways in which the product can touch the lives of the target market population individually. It will then design a programme to ensure that lives and living are actually improved by the distribution of the product.
“What we believe is that our brands should have a purpose of improving lives. Take Pampers for instance. The brand purpose of Pampers is to improve the development of children. So we first define it like that. Then we begin to think of how we can improve the development of children through it. So we begin to talk to mothers, to nurses in the hospital and educate them on how the lives of the children can be improved. So our Pampers Baby Care Hospital Program and Mobile Clinics touch the lives of 1.5 million young Nigerian mothers and their babies annually.”
Kumar also said that the company partners with credible non-governmental organisations in the country to implement some of its CSR initiatives. According to him these NGOs use their own capacities to implement some of the programmes like “Building Futures”, which is an empowerment initiatives for orphanages in the country and the PUR School programme, an initiative that targets children with the provision of safe drinking water.
“In “Building Futures” we adopted orphanages in the country through which we reach about 2500 children. And we donate a year supply of our products and we also give them clothes. We improve their infrastructure by giving them computers and other resources that they need within the orphanages. We carry out this programme in partnership with another NGO – Sponsor-a-Child. We believe that orphanages are one area that has been neglected by the society. So we think we should do something from the corporate point of view. And again, all our brands come together to help and therefore we integrate all our corporate programmes for touching lives of all our consumers into brands programmes,” Kumar said.
Speaking about the proposed production lines at Agbara, Manoj Kumar said that the plant, which will employ over 600 people directly and over 1000 more indirectly at Agbara in Ogun State is part of the company’s resolve to invest 15 billion naira in Nigeria between now and 2015. According to him, the company will install state of the art machinery at Agbara
Mr. Kumar also revealed that P&G has provided jobs for about 1800 people in the country through its general office, factories, distribution channels, logistics and advertising. According to him 95% of all P&G's managers in Nigeria are highly talented Nigerian men and women.
“At P&G, we consider our people to be our biggest asset and in Nigeria we have grown to be leaders in technology transfer and capacity building. We are dedicated to local employee development with a budget of over $1million per year for local and international training and on-the-job coaching. We have created over 120 new successful entrepreneurs with sustained training and marketing support in rural and semi-urban areas over the past 5 years,” he said.