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DRDGold chops back at ERPM Posted: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 [miningmx.com] -- DRDGold’s ERPM mine at Boksburg on South Africa’s East Rand is to cut back on its operations placing some 400 jobs at risk out of its total workforce of 1,900. The company put out a SENS announcement on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange today saying it intended initiating a 60-day formal consultation process with recognised unions in terms of the provisions of sections 189 and 189A of the Labour Relations Act. This follows developments at ERPM last week in which GM Manny da Silva was placed on a week’s leave of absence. DRDGold South Africa CEO Niel Pretorius declined to provide specific reasons for this action at the time. National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) regional secretary Mluleki Senene told Miningmx that ERPM management had told the union 400 jobs would have to be cut because the mine was losing money at a rate of R4,1m a month. Pretorius said today that; “we have decided to close two sections in the deepest levels of the mine which have been making negative contributions to earnings. Some 400 workers are affected who will either be redeployed, if possible, to other sections of the mine or will be retrenched.” Pretorius added that Da Silva would be leaving ERPM at the end of the month. He commented; “ERPM is getting smaller and no longer needs an elaborate management team. We are looking at complete re-engineering of the mine and there is no longer a need for a full GM to run it. “ He said details of the new mining structure would be given when DRDGold reported its results for the March quarter. ERPM is more than a century old and one of the deepest gold mines operating in South Africa. The combination of depth and age makes it one of the highest cost producers in the industry. Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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