Gold Fields’s South Deep Mine was given permission to resume mining after a meeting with the Department of Minerals and Energy on Monday. ”The section 54 ruling [which suspends mining] has been lifted,” said spokesperson Sputnik Rantau. ”The mine has been allowed to go back into operation.”
Gold Fields’ South Deep mine remained closed on Monday ahead of a meeting between the company and the Gauteng mines safety inspector to determine whether conditions were safe enough for operations to continue. Nine people died at the company’s South Deep mine last Thursday.
One of the three mine workers injured during a ground fall at Driefontein mine on Tuesday has died, bringing the death toll from recent mining accidents on the West Rand to five, a Gold Fields spokesperson said on Wednesday. Andrew Davidson said the worker had been taken to a hospital in Carletonville to be stabilised, and was then transferred to the Krugersdorp Hospital, but later died.
Power may have to be cut to South Africa’s vital gold and platinum mines if more generators fail because of bad weather, Eskom said on Tuesday, sending local mining shares tumbling. ”At the moment we are in a very tight situation,” said Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger.
The body of a miner who was crushed by rocks at the Beatrix gold mine at Welkom two weeks ago has not been exhumed, Gold Fields said on Tuesday. ”We temporarily suspended the removal of the rocks last week because it was becoming dangerous for the rescue team,” said spokesperson Andrew Davidson.
South Africa, producer of 30% of the gold in circulation today, is unable to profit fully from record prices for the precious metal as a crippling electricity crisis hampers production. The price of gold passed the 000-an-ounce mark for the first time on Thursday.
Gold Fields said on Wednesday an employee who was trapped at its Beatrix mine had been rescued but another was still missing after an accident on Tuesday. The company — the world’s fourth largest gold miner — said the incident occurred after the ground shifted in a stope 750m below the surface at the number one shaft of the mine in the Free State.
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/ 25 February 2008
A mineworker died at Gold Fields’ Kloof mine when a rock fell on him during a series of earth tremors early on Monday morning, police and a mine spokesperson said. Gold Fields spokesperson Andrew Davidson said: ”Unfortunately I can confirm that one of our colleagues died this morning.”
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/ 6 December 2007
A miner was killed on Thursday when a rock fell on him at Kloof gold mine near Westonaria, Gold Fields spokesperson Andrew Davidson said. ”The accident, the result of a rockfall, occurred in a stope at number three shaft 2 936m below ground at 11am,” said Davidson. Another miner who was working in the stope was injured during the rockfall.
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/ 4 December 2007
Thousands of mineworkers took to the streets of central Johannesburg on Tuesday, urging industry bosses to beef up safety in South African mines. This year, there have been more than 200 deaths in the mining industry. Major mining companies said they were badly affected by the one-day strike.
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/ 4 December 2007
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) launched a one-day strike on Tuesday to protest against deaths in the country’s mines, disrupting operations across the world’s top producer of platinum and gold. Almost a quarter of a million union members were set to down tools in the first industry-wide strike on safety, as the death toll mounted to about 200.
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/ 25 November 2007
A miner was killed at the Driefontein mine near Carletonville on Saturday, Gold Fields said. ”It is regrettable that a loco guard was injured when he was caught between the locomotive and the loader in a haulage in level 44 in shaft five,” said Gold Fields spokesperson Andrew Davidson.
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/ 2 November 2007
AngloGold Ashanti shut one of its larger mines in South Africa on Friday after a miner was killed in a rockfall as a miners’ strike to protest against the spate of mine deaths in the country loomed. AngloGold, the world’s third-biggest gold producer, shut its TauTona mine after the worker died in the early hours of Friday.
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/ 10 October 2007
Four miners died in separate, unrelated incidents at Gold Fields mines 10km from each other in Westonaria on Wednesday afternoon. Three of the mine workers were killed when they were hit by a skip loaded with spillage rock in the Four Shaft complex of Kloof Gold Mine near Westonaria on Wednesday, said Gold Fields.
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/ 3 September 2007
The search for a miner who went missing in a rockfall at Driefontein gold mine near Carletonville, continued on Monday, the mine said. Gold Fields spokesperson Andrew Davidson said the miner had been working in a stope 3 000m underground on Saturday when there was a rockfall.