The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Wednesday accused world number two gold miner AngloGold’s Tautona mine near Carletonville of being the latest contributor to what it called the company’s “mines of death”.
This comes after two mineworkers died in an accident related to a vertical transport conveyance (an elevator) on Wednesday morning.
The mineworkers were being transported to the working areas to begin their morning shift.
The trade union added that it would seem that AngloGold was determined to “spearhead a culture of unsafe mines”.
“It is hardly a week since we reported about two mineworkers dying in the Mponeng mine, less than a month since the death of three mineworkers in Savuka, and already two are dead in Tautona. Family members of workers who were killed in Mponeng have not yet buried their loved ones, colleagues of the departed workers have as yet to mourn them.”
The NUM said the manner in which the company was having accidents in the Carletonville area alone, within such a short term, gave it the impression that the mining company believed “they have the right to kill and maim mineworkers, then hide behind press statement clichés [that] the company ‘will hold a full investigation into the cause of the accident'”.
The union added that in its view the cause was clear: that “AngloGold’s Tautona elevator has killed two mineworkers”.
“It is the company’s responsibility to maintain and service their machinery, particularly one that carries people — thereby having to deal with human life.”
Having already called on the Department of Mineral and Energy’s Inspectorate of Mines to look into safety at the AngloGold mines, and hearing nothing from the inspectorate, the trade union said it was waiting with “bated breath to hear how they can account for two more deaths at another AngloGold mine”. — I-Net Bridge