Harmony death toll leaps to 76

Allan Seccombe | Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:05
[miningmx.com] -- HARMONY Gold received another anonymous phone call to tell it there were 15 more bodies of illegal miners asphyxiated by an underground fire at defunct parts of its Eland mine.

The number of illegal miners killed by what is thought to be an underground fire started by the illegal miners now stands at 76.

This is an astonishing number, considering 72 people have been killed on all South Africa’s mines in accidents recorded by the authorities.

“We have absolutely no idea what the scope of this problem is,” said Marian van der Walt, Harmony’s executive in charge of investor relations.

The 15 bodies were found at a work station early on Thursday morning.

“We get anonymous phone calls to tell us more bodies have been left at a certain work station and that we should go fetch them,” van der Walt said. “This is more or less how it happened for these 76 people.”

“They phone and ask us for body bags,” she said.

In the past, the illegal miners’ network would phone the company to tell them where to find sick or injured people. Harmony would dispatch a team to find these people, take them to the surface, ensure they were treated and then prosecuted.

Parts of the Eland mine have been shut for five years. Illegal miners are digging gold-bearing ore that Harmony, with its labour and other overhead costs, cannot mine profitably.

The illegal miners are known as zama-zamas and are thought to be mainly foreigners and ex-mineworkers. South Africa has drawn heavily on Lesotho and Mozambique, for example, to work on its mines.

Post mortems conducted on 25 bodies hauled from the mine on Tuesday showed they died from smoke and gas inhalation.

Harmony says it hasn’t seen a fire or smoke, but its gas monitors have detected gases that are possibly fire-related.

Harmony CEO Graham Briggs has resisted calls to send rescue teams into the disused parts of the mine, which are unventilated, unlit and now filled with noxious gases.

He has said the safety of Harmony’s workers is paramount and he refuses to send them into a patently dangerous environment.

The disused areas were closed, he said. “You don’t just get into them by accident,” he said.

The mines are nearly all interlinked via tunnels and it’s not clear how many illegal workers are underground. They are supplied by legitimate workers bribed to take food underground, a practice that is now banned.

The country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers, has lashed out at Harmony’s management, blaming it for the deaths and calling on the government to slap the company with a large fine.

The company has denied the union’s allegations.

The problem is not unique to Harmony. Companies with older assets have the same problem. Pan African Resources has reported the deaths of around 15 illegal miners, also killed by the fumes from a fire, at its mines in Barberton earlier this year.

Harmony said earlier this week 294 illegal miners at Elands have been charged with trespassing and illegal gold possession.