Sagunto's SAG hands out 460 heat-stroke prevention wristbands to staff
Sagunto's public company SAG (Sociedad Anónima de Gestión) is distributing around 460 preventive wristbands against heat stroke to staff most exposed to high temperatures, with an investment of about €18,000.
SAG is the municipal public company that manages services such as beach maintenance, street cleaning, markets and urban tree care in Sagunto — work that is mostly done outdoors and therefore especially vulnerable to summer heat extremes.
The distribution is focused, in a first phase, on staff in the gardens and urban cleaning area whose tasks involve greater heat exposure: beach workers, street cleaners, market staff, work crews, crane operators, signage teams, bin-changing staff and workshop personnel. A second phase will complete the rollout among urban cleaning service drivers and staff who clean public buildings and maintain schools and cemeteries.
Although drivers spend much of their shift in air-conditioned vehicles, SAG has decided to include them in the second phase too, to keep the same criteria across all shifts and ensure the whole workforce has access to the same preventive tool.
The measure comes together with information sessions on the main guidelines for preventing heat-related illness and with written guides that reinforce awareness among workers, offering practical advice on how to act in the event of a heat-risk situation during the working day.
The extra prevention effort comes amid tighter regulation: since the 2023 reform of Royal Decree 486/1997 (Real Decreto 486/1997, Spain's workplace risk-prevention law), employers are required to adapt working conditions — including cutting or changing shift hours — whenever the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) issues an orange or red-level warning for events such as heatwaves, if existing preventive measures are not enough to protect staff. The rule was passed after several workers died of heat stroke during the 2022 heatwave, and public companies like SAG have since strengthened their summer protocols.
With this roughly €18,000 investment, the public company aims to protect the health of its nearly 460 employees who work outdoors or in conditions of greater heat exposure, adapting working conditions to intense heat episodes that, in recent summers, have become more frequent and longer-lasting in the district. According to aytosagunto.es, with additional background from Spain's Official State Gazette (BOE) on workplace heat-protection regulation.