As part of measures to sustain cordial working relationship, the Management of Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc, on Wednesday, met with its 29 host communities.
The company also used the opportunity to present N90,000 cheque each to 37 students of higher institutions as a bursary award for the 2021 academic session.
Addressing the communities at Okomu, near Iguobazuwa, Ovia South West Local Government, Edo State, the Managing Director of the company, Dr. Graham Hefer, explained that such forum creates an avenue for cross-fertilization of ideas for growth and development.
He explained that effective communication has continued to engender good working relationships between companies and their host communities.
Represented by Mr Fidelis Olise, the company’s head of Communications, Hefer explained that the company would continue to relate well with its 29 host communities where its over 30 000 hectares of plantations were being cultivated.
According to him, it requires effective communication skills to sustain such cordial relationships.
He said that absence of this could bring about crisis and slow down growth and development in any community.
Hefer disclosed that the existing cordial relationship had brought about completion of 90 per cent of executed projects in these communities under its social corporate responsibility platform in 2021.
Earlier, community relations consultant, Mr Kingsley Erinwionghae, described communication as focal point of human existence that had evolved from pre-historic times into the fastest growing phenomenon in the world today,.
According to him, it is the fulcrum of decision-making in any organisation, be it a firm or community.
He said: “If issues or matters are wrongly analysed and communicated, this can spell doom to any entity because a company or a community is an open-system which exists through a process of on-going wealth-creating interactions with its environment.”.
