Flagging commitment for employee health: CMD and Directors leading the Walkathon at ONGC residential colony at Noida and in the neighborhood

Flagging their complete commitment for employee  health, CMD Mr. D K Sarraf, Director (T&FS) Mr. Shashi Shanker, Director  (HR) Mr. D D Misra, Director (Onshore) Mr. V P Mahawar, Director (Finance) Mr.  A K Srinivasan, CVO Dr A K Ambasht and Chief Security Mr. D C Srivastva donned  the Walk for Health T-shirt and led the ONGCians and their families for this  fitness movement in the oil major.

Fitness expert Dr. Sunita Godara, who is a two-time Asian Gold medal winner in Marathon, gave a brief talk on the benefits of ‘walking’ and ‘smiling’. Dr. Godara said we need to LEARN in our lives; L: A positive Lifestyle, E: Regular Exercise, A: Positive Attitude, R: Taking Responsibility for our body and N: Proper Nutrition. She led the gathering to a 6-minute energetic warm-up before the Walkathon.

62-year Mountaineer Ms. Mala Honnatti, who has  scheduled an ascent to Mount Everest, was also an invitee on the launch of the  ONGC Walk for Health. Congratulating ONGC for this employee fitness drive, she  said, “Walking is to be done regularly to reap the benefits. We service our  vehicles regularly, but we need to service our bodies also. Invest an hour  every day in your body and you will be rewarded with a rich corpus of health  when you retire. I will suggest that ONGC considers incentives to its employees  for remaining fit. This makes economic sense also as the medical expenditure  will go down. Healthy employees are productive employees also.”

Addressing the gathering of employees and their families, CMD Mr. D K Sarraf said, “I started walking just five years ago. Though there were initial challenges in sustaining the regimen, it has become a part of my life now. I miss my walking, if I have to forego it due to some reason.” Following up on Ms. Hannotti’s remarks, Mr. Sarraf said that ONGC can consider incentives for better health. CMD desired that family members should also participate in walks, as health of all family members are equally important.

Earlier, Director (HR), who conceptualized this  Walk for Health for employees, inspired the gathering by his talk. Revealing some  statistics about ONGCians, he said, around 10 per cent of ONGCians are  diabetic, 37 per cent hypertensive, 46 per cent with high cholesterol. “The BMI  scores are also not encouraging for most of us. Hence, we need to adopt healthy  lifestyles like walking regularly. It is easier to wake up early and WALK ,  than it is to sleep late each day, then get up and look at yourself in the  mirror  and not like what you see.  Walking is the most potent and underutilised antidepressant and its FREE.  Today’s Walkathon is not a one-off exercise; with the support of EC, we intend  to take several similar initiatives to make ‘Walking’ a way of Life in ONGC”