He is also a strong supporter of Khazanah Nasional’s Global Lectures series, underlining his long-standing relationship with the Malaysian community. Westports was the main sponsor at last year’s Khazanah Global Lectures 2010 whose eminent speaker was Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India.

Tan Sri Gnanalingam is known for his trademark management style, which includes leaving no stone unturned, initiating mind-shifts and quantum leaps and thinking out of the box. He is also well-known for his generosity and social work. In terms of community and social services, his work renowned among the people in Pulau Indah, Port Klang, where Westports is located. Due to efforts by Westports, the poverty level on the island dropped tremendously over the years.

He strongly believes in 3 factors when operating a business. Profits, Passion and Compassion are the bottom line of any company. At Westports, profit means sustaining business, ability to control and expand as well as satisfying shareholders return. As an organization, the port is also passionate – for its people especially in creating total employee satisfaction.

Westports is also synonymous with its location, Pulau Indah (adopting it at the core of its CSR Initiative), and this has brought about the compassion for its surroundings, most importantly the island’s people can say goodbye to living under poverty, thanks to the port’s poverty eradication programme. The programme in Pulau Indah continues to provide a helping hand to the needy. Since it’s opening in 1994, Westports has adopted long-term policies with regard to poverty eradication.

Today, Westports not only provides job opportunities for the locals, but also provides monthly financial assistance to those who are poor as well as orphaned children. About 60% of Westports employees are Pulau Indah residents. The success of Westports Poverty Eradication Programme is evident from the sharp decline, if not Zero, in the incidence of poverty.

Besides the resounding success of being a garden port, Westports significant contribution towards environment management in 2009 was the formation of the Oil Spill Response Team. It is a dedicated team comprising of personnel of the Port police, Fire and Rescue Department. Their main job is to tactically fight oil spills at ship berthing areas at Westports as well as the channel passing through the port.

Additionally, Westports also has competent teams for monitoring of Noise, Chemical Hazard Risk Assessment and Ambient Air Monitoring. Notably, the Environmental initiatives that will have greater significance is the ISO 14001 project, certified in Year 2009 for the entire port operations. Westports proved itself to be a truly world class terminal, setting standards for all other terminals in the country, by receiving the coveted environmental management system ISO 14001 certification as well as the OHSAS 18001 occupational health and safety management system.

With a contingent of 200 auxiliary port police officers Westports police was assigned policing powers in 2009 under the NKRA program for the entire Pulau Indah where the port is located. It is now their mission to ensure not only the security aspect of the port, but also to make Pulau Indah a crime-free island.

Westports strongly believes that healthy employees would contribute to the growth of the company. Its objectives are to create awareness and educate employees on healthy living and to instill in employees to take ownership and importance of their own health.

Several healthy living initiatives were planned by the company and were successfully implemented in 2009 to promote healthy living condition in Westports. The most significant one was the Healthy Passport program, which made it compulsory for all staff to undergo medical screening. They were tagged as Green (Good), Yellow (Moderate) and Red (Danger Zone), after the screening.

In January 2009, the company had 454 employees in the red zone or critical time bombs waiting to explode because of Pressure, High cholesterol and Diabetes (PHD). We are pleased to say that this has been reduced to 143 employees by December 2009 and to below 100 in 2010. This shows that when employees are guided in terms of taking their medicine, proper diet and appropriate exercises, they can be saved or rescued from the PHD problem.