Each of our plants has on-site housing, including bachelor apartments and family accommodations. Since a lot of our employees come from small villages rather than the city, we needed to provide them with housing. Clean, hygienic homes and environments have been created for families to grow up with higher standards than they may have had previously.

Every year, we travel 1.5 hours to a town called Sheikhupura outside of Lahore, to provide cataract treatment to the poor. We provide full treatment and surgeries for free.

Our spinning units are primarily located in Sheikhupura, where we have a large cluster of plants. There were no schools in that entire area when we initially built those units. So one of the problems the workers faced was that they had children and were living in the colonies, but where could they send them to school? Therefore, Abdullah School was built right next to one of our spinning units.

The Sapphire Group is one of the original sponsors of a number of institutions in Pakistan, for example Mr Shayan Abdullah is on the board of sponsors for the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His grandfather made a lot of contributions to the Aga Khan University Hospital, which we still support today.

As a company, we always encourage HR to arrange family events, take employees and their families out for outings or hikes so they all feel connected to each other. It is important to us that people enjoy their time with us, that loyalty is organic and that good talent is developed. When our employees have any problems with their education or medical health, we feel compelled to help them; for example, by covering the costs of education when their families cannot afford them.

Our core focus at Neela is gender equality, and by now 65 % of our staff are female. The facilities at the fatima jinnah compound are specially designed to help our staff members feel comfortable.