Melbourne | Tuesday
HIV/Aids among its workers is projected to cost South African miner Gold Fields between $$4 and $10 for each ounce of gold it mines in added production costs, chairman and chief executive Chris Thompson said on Tuesday.
Thompson said more than a quarter of its 50 000 employees were HIV positive and that a number of company-run intervention and home care programmes were underway to address the epidemic.
HIV can lead to Aids and studies show HIV/Aids infects one in nine South Africans, or about 20% of the adult population.
”Without intervention, as we calculate it, Aids will cost us about $10 an ounce,” in health costs, Thompson said on the sidelines of the Australian Gold Conference.
”With interventions, and we have a number of good interventions underway, we can probably get it down to about four dollars. Of that cost, we are probably absorbing 35% now,” Thompson said.
Gold Fields mines about 4,7-million ounces a year, currently at an average cost near $170 an ounce, Thompson said.
South Africa’s Bureau for Economic Research says that because of Aids, South Africa’s economy is likely to be 1,5% lower by 2010 than it would be without Aids and 5,7% lower by 2015.
Gold Fields has been barred from screening employees for HIV/Aids since 1998, but estimates 26,5% of its workforce is HIV positive, Thompson said.
About 140 000 people work in South Africa’s gold mines. – Reuters