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Death toll in the Brazilian Dam Disaster jumps to 34, Many still missing
- a) Company’s Responsibility
Companies have a responsibility to the people within the regions where they operate. It is the responsibility of a company to ensure that it has put in place all necessary measures to ensure the people’s safety in its region. Companies are supposed to work towards ensuring that they offer protection and ensure that the people within their region of operation are safe. That is important because the company needs the people within its region. Hence, it has the social responsibility of ensuring that its operations do not result in any way harm or hurt the people living around it. Besides, companies are also required to work towards ensuring that their operations do not place the environment at harm’s way by having relevant systems in place to protect the environment and prevent harm to the people.
Trevisani and Lewis (2) indicate that this incident was a second one after another similar dam had burst its walls four years ago. Vale partly owned the dam that burst its walls four years ago. Yet, it seems that the company’s management did not learn from this incident. That is evident in the fact that the company never took any steps to ensure people’s safety in the regions where it operates. In this regard, the company can be held responsible for the injury and losses incurred in its region of operations due to its failure to have the right systems in place. The company has the duty of care to the people and the ecological system in its operation area but failed to take the right measures to protect them; hence, it should be held responsible.
- b) Investors’ Responsibility
Investors are the company; hence, as per the agency laws, they are liable for the decisions that their principles comprise of the management teams. Besides, investors are supposed to exercise case when deciding to invest in a company. That means that the investors should have followed up on whether Vale has implemented the necessary steps to prevent an incident such as four years ago from happening again. However, they failed to follow up on what the managers were doing to mitigate or reduce the risk of people losing their lives or suffering economic losses due to the company’s negligence. In this regard, the investors of the company are, by extension, responsible for the disaster since they had the duty to follow up on what measures are in place to safeguard against the same.
Since the company operates in the region, investors are responsible for the families living in the area. Being the owners of the company, they ought to have developed preventive measures before the incident occurred. As of now, they have the responsibility of helping the families get back to the feet after the loss they incurred following the bursting of the dam. Therefore, the investors’ responsibility is, by extension, the same as that of the company because they were supposed to have in place the necessary measures to protect the individuals but failed. Therefore, they are liable to the companies that lost their loved ones and properties in this disaster.
Works Cited
Lewis, Paulo, and Jeffrey T. Lewis. “Death Toll in Brazilian Mining-Dam Disaster Jumps to 34”. WSJ, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-toll-in-brazilian-mining-dam-disaster-rises-to-nine-11548512826?mod=hp_lead_pos8.