Caltex Malaysia turns 90 and hands the spotlight to its own staff

KUALA LUMPUR: Caltex has been selling fuel in Malaysia for 90 years, and rather than mark the anniversary with the usual milestone reel, the company has put six of its longest-serving people forward instead.

Most are employees. The other two are a retail partner and a lubricants distributor, both with decades behind them.

Between them they cover the parts of the fuel business Malaysian drivers never see. You pull in, pay and leave. Everything before that runs on terminals, tankers, delivery schedules and a lot of safety checks.

Two of them work well upstream of the pump. Ts. Amanina binti Mohamad Rozi joined as a chemical engineering graduate and has spent 22 years in workforce safety and health, now covering operations across Asia Pacific.

Yang Way Han signed on in 1988 for what was meant to be a short stint and is still there 38 years later, supervising the JV Pasir Gudang terminal in Johor, where his team keeps more than 80 Caltex stations across southern Peninsular Malaysia supplied. His father drove Caltex fuel trucks from 1964 until 1987.

Three others are station level. Haji Che Din Bin Mohamad quit a government job in 1987 to open a station in Pasir Mas, Kelantan, and now runs three.

Harchana a/p Narainasamy has spent eight years on the counter at Caltex Pekan Lama in Sungai Petani. Md Hanis Bin Ariffin has been a general helper at Caltex Setiawangsa in Kuala Lumpur since 2006; he is deaf and does not speak, and says the moments that stick with him are a nod or a signed thank you from a driver.

The sixth is not an employee. Celine Khong runs Chop Yew Lee Group, which her parents set up in 1976 with Caltex as their first supplier, and which today is a master distributor of Caltex lubricants and diesel.

The most concrete story of the lot is Amanina's. She found that cultural habits and a reluctance to contradict a superior were stopping workers from flagging hazards, so she helped push the "Safety Starts with Me" campaign and put weight behind the company's "Stop Work Authority", which lets any employee or contractor halt a job over an unsafe condition without repercussions.

"For me, that was a turning point. It reminded me that true safety culture begins when every voice matters. Whether you are a contractor, operator, supervisor, engineer or manager, everyone should have the courage and permission to say, 'Stop, this does not look safe'," said Ts. Amanina.

The campaign is timed to Merdeka and Malaysia Day, with Malaysia marking its 69th Merdeka, and there is a commemorative video on the Caltex Malaysia YouTube channel.

Caltex sits in a crowded market here alongside Petronas, Shell, Petron and BHPetrol, so anniversary campaigns like this are less about the fuel and more about staying familiar.