The consistently high death toll of workers in South Africa’s mines is of great concern, Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said on a visit to AngloGold Ashanti’s Moab Khotsong mine near Orkney on Wednesday.
The two deaths there over the weekend brought to four the toll at the mine, said chief inspector of mines Thabo Gazi, who accompanied Sonjica on an underground tour of the accident site.
He said there had been an unconfirmed 110 deaths on mines since the start of the year. There were 199 deaths in all last year.
Of the deaths this year, 58 were at gold mines, said Gazi.
He said AngloGold Ashanti operations accounted for 25 of the fatalities in 2006. So far this year there had been 14 deaths at the company’s seven operations in the country.
Gazi said targets aimed at reducing fatalities were set by the government in conjunction with the industry and labour in 2003. These stipulated a 20% decrease year-on-year.
While there was a 16,5% drop in 2004, there had been no improvement in 2006 and 2007 was ”basically the same”.
”We are where we were last year. It doesn’t seem we are getting the improvement [we hoped for],” he said.
Profits could not come before people’s lives, Sonjica said at Moab Khotsong, adding that while mines had to improve health and safety, inspections had to be tightened too.
She said company CEOs and accounting officers had to be held accountable for the fatal accidents in mines. They needed to do more to reverse the trend.
In a statement, the Department of Minerals and Energy said it would cooperate with the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to ensure legal compliance by mine owners and operators.
”Operations which have no health and safety plans will be stopped and we will consider the withdrawal of mining licences where operations are failing to comply with health and safety requirements,” the department said.
‘Useful exchange’
AngloGold Ashanti said it had been making ”positive headway” until 2006 and was now taking a long, hard look as what had changed.
Spokesperson Alan Fine described Wednesday’s visit as a ”useful exchange” of reports and ideas about mine safety in general, but with a close focus on the events that caused the accident at Moab Khutsong.
He said Sonjica, Gazi and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni were taken into those underground areas that had been secured since the incident.
”There are a couple of areas that are still dangerous, but we didn’t venture into these,” he said.
The department ordered a complete shutdown at Moab Khutsong after Friday’s incident in which three miners were trapped underground when a seismic event triggered a fall of ground 3000m down the shaft at 4.40am.
A miner was rescued immediately afterwards with minor injuries and was taken to hospital in a stable condition, but the others were found dead on Sunday.
The shutdown order has since been partially lifted to allow blasting in areas other than the development end where the fall occurred and two adjoining areas, said Baleni, who joined the minister and chief inspector on their visit.
Gazi said an investigation and inquiry was being conducted into the incident.
By Wednesday, teams had recovered 46 hopper-loads of fallen ground from the scene and there was still a lot more ground to move, Gazi said, adding that one hopper could carry about six tons.
Gazi said the improvement of safety systems at the mine would be handled by the department’s regional office.
NUM’s Baleni said it had emerged on Wednesday that this was the first seismic event at the mine, and as a result it had not had in place the support systems normally used where there was seismicity.
The seismic event, of only 0,7 magnitude, should not have had as big an impact, he said. — Sapa