The social & ethics committee, which was established on 1 July 2010, operates under an approved charter and the draft Companies Amendment Bill 2010. It assists the Board to fulfill its corporate governance responsibilities and to ensure the Group’s commitment to zero harm from the impact of its business on the wellbeing of the company, all its employees, shareholders, clients and business partners and society in general, and to monitor its ethical practices.

Membership

The committee comprises the group chairman and two independent non-executive directors. M Sello serves as chairman of the committee with RC Andersen and AA Routledge as members. The group chief executive, group financial director, group head of assurance and enterprise capability executive attend meetings in an ex officio capacity.

The committee met on one occasion, the initial meeting of the committee.

Terms of reference

The chairman of the committee reports to the Board on the committee’s deliberations and decisions. The committee assists the Board by regularly submitting reports and recommendations by:

reviewing and approving the policy, strategy and structure to manage social and ethics issues in the Group
monitoring to the best of its ability that subsidiaries, associate companies and significant investments develop policies, guidelines and practices congruent with the company’s social and ethics policies
assessing and measuring performance in social and ethics areas with reference to the United Nations Global Compact Principles, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the JSE Socially Responsible Investment Index, the Department of Trade and Industry Broadbased Black Economic Empowerment scorecard, International Labour Organisa tion protocols and the King Code of Governance Principles for South Africa 2009 (King III)
reviewing compliance by the company, its subsidiaries and associates with policy, guidelines and appropriate local and international standards and relevant local laws in social and ethics matters including competition laws
considering substantive national and international regulatory developments as well as practice in the fields of social and ethics management
reviewing the Murray & Roberts Socially Responsible Investment Index and broad-based economic empowerment performance disclosures
as appropriate, consulting and communicating with internal and external stakeholders with respect to social and ethics issues
reporting annually to shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on social and ethics issues
ensuring that management has allocated adequate resources to comply with social and ethics policies, codes of best practice and regulatory requirements

Committee scope

At its first meeting, the committee reviewed its terms of reference, the Group’s Corporate Social Investment program and the committee’s role in reviewing the company’s future integrated report.

It was agreed that a significant amount of work is planned for the committee during the coming year. The committee will consider, inter alia, the following items:

policy, strategy and structure
JSE Socially Responsible Investment Index profile
broad-based black economic empowerment rating and profile
group Corporate Social Investment and Letsema programs
compliance with policy, guidelines and appropriate local and international standards and relevant local laws, including:
– Competition Act
– Employment Equity Act
– International Labour Organisation protocol on decent work and working conditions
– King III
– OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
– United Nations Global Compact Principles
national and international regulatory and practice developments
integrated report review

Integrated report

Going forward, the Group’s integrated report will contain a large amount of information reviewed and considered during the course of the committee’s future activities. As a consequence the committee will, prior to review by the audit committee, review content in the integrated report that is relevant to the social & ethics committee. This will be undertaken for the 2011 integrated report.

Corporate social investment

As South Africa’s leading engineering and contracting group, Murray & Roberts has adopted a deliberate and targeted CSI strategy as a vehicle to influence and impact the delivery of quality education in South Africa and more specifically the shortage of critical skills needed in the engineering and construction industry. In 2010 Murray & Roberts contributed R22,2 million to CSI (2009: R21,1 million). Further details of the Group’s CSI activities are contained in the sustainability report on pages 106 and 107.

Mahlape Sello
Chairman