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SA mine safety under fire
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Wed, 14 Nov 2007
[miningmx.com] -- AN ACCIDENT AT Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine – trapping 3 200 workers 2km underground for up to 30 hours early in October – was the tipping point for the South African government with regard to its mining industry’s safety performance.
The Harmony incident – in which nobody died or was hurt – followed hard on the heels of four deaths in a rock fall 3.3km below the surface at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng mine.
The government has lost patience with the poor safety record at the world’s deepest and arguably most dangerous mines. Mines & Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica, speaking on national radio after the last Harmony worker was rescued, accused the industry of regarding black lives as cheap and moving too sluggishly to bring safer working conditions to mines.
The Harmony incident prompted President Thabo Mbeki to order an audit of all South Africa’s mines to
determine whether they comply with health and safety laws. Monitoring mining practises and investigating accidents is difficult for Sonjica’s department, which doesn’t have enough inspectors, she says. “I have to deal with that issue and capacitate my department. I must recruit more engineers. We have a high turnover of inspectors and it’s something I have to deal with.”
There’s increasing concern that the platinum sector will soon begin reporting on deaths in seismic and rock fall events as its mines go deeper. Harmony chairman Patrice Motsepe says it’s a matter of urgency that the talk regarding safety stopped and for companies to do more to make mines safer.
“We have to recommit ourselves to refocus on safety in this country. Our safety record – both as a company and an industry – leaves much to be desired.”
Statistics
A South African Chamber of Mines study in 2004 showed the industry’s safety performance to be more than 50% worse than
that benchmarked in Canada, Australia and the US, requiring an improvement of 20%/year to reach those international levels by 2013 – something the sector has committed itself to achieve.
The frequency fatality rate (FFR), which measures fatalities each million hours worked, have halved since 1996. However, the gold sector has bucked the trend since 2004 due to a high turnover in skilled people, low morale and tough working conditions.
Deaths in the entire mining sector had fallen to 199 last years, from 290 in 2002. The mining sector’s overall safety figures showed no improvement in 2006 from the previous year.
“The concern we have is that in 2006 there was no improvement and for 2007 there appears to be no improvement either,” says Sietse van der Woude, safety and sustainable development adviser at the Chamber of Mines. “There’s a plateau. That’s a major concern to the industry, because we want to see an accelerated improvement – and that’s just not happening
at the moment.
“Last year we killed nearly 200 people. A 100 years ago people would have thought that an excellent rate. In 10 years’ time we’ll look back and see that rate and we’ll be shocked.”
The chamber is taking health and safety issues extremely seriously and, in conjunction with its members that represent 90% of South Africa’s minerals production, will set up four specialist “adoption teams” by year-end.
Those teams will investigate health and safety strategies implemented worldwide, including those in South Africa. They’ll recommend which should be adopted and how they should be implemented in a virtual step-by-step guide for the sector.
“We think it will take three years to show real, widespread adoption of particular practises that may include technologies,” says Van der Woude. “If you take one of the large companies, to gain adoption of a practice from one mine to another mine operating under a single CEO is already a major challenge. To do
it across companies is even more difficult.”
Underground seismicity and rock bursts form one of four focus areas the sector is bringing under particularly close scrutiny to achieve accelerated improvements in health and safety.
“Employers fully share with other stakeholders the concern at the unacceptably high level of seismic and rock burst-related accidents,” says AngloGold’s Robbie Lazare, who chairs the chamber’s gold producers’ committee. “South Africa is an acknowledged world leader in ultra-deep underground mining technology. We need to become a world leader in underground safe mining as well.”
The other three focus areas are: noise, dust and leadership – the latter seen as a pivotal point in the sharing and, critically, the adoption of best practises throughout the sector, which has hitherto seen companies operating in isolation.
Bad air
Dust is a killer. At least 18,000 people have died from silicosis – a lung disease caused by
breathing silica quartz dust prevalent in gold mines – since 1997, according to the Chamber’s 2007 Sustainability and Transformation Report.
AngloGold Ashanti is facing a R2.6m lawsuit brought by a team of powerful lawyers on behalf of a sick former worker in a case that some believe could open SA’s gold mining sector to claims worth billions of rand. A summons was served in October last year on behalf of Thembekile Mankayi, who worked at AngloGold’s underground mines and contracted silicosis.
 vicious circle needs to be broken 
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