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Anglo Platinum defends its safety efforts
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Thu, 28 Jun 2007

[miningmx.com] -- ANGLO Platinum has taken safety at its South African mining operations seriously and has implemented a range of schemes to reduce deaths and injuries, the company said on Thursday.

Anglo Platinum’s defence was prompted by press releases issued this week by a Christian non-governmental organisation called Bench Marks Foundation to publicise a report it had compiled on the effects of platinum and chrome mining in the Northwest Province on the Western Limb of the Bushveld Complex.

The report was scathing of the impact mining has had on the lives of people living around the operations. It said the four major mining companies, Anglo Platinum, Impala Platinum, Xstrata and Lonmin Platinum, were responsible for depleting and polluting water sources, polluting the air and that their operations had “huge negative impacts on surrounding communities.”

Anglo Platinum was singled out by Bench Marks, which said a health and safety inspectorate audit in 1999 of the world’s largest platinum miner had found the company’s preventative measures to reduce mine fatalities were inadequate and that safety measures were not enforced or adequately coordinated.

Anglo Platinum spokesman Trevor Raymond wrote in a letter to the Business Report, which featured the Bench Marks report prominently this week, that the company felt it had been unfairly singled out.

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“Angloplat has a constant and long-standing focus on improving health and safety at its mines,” Raymond said.

Up to 1999, Anglo Platinum focussed on complying with the Mine Health and Safety Act and since then it has started a range of initiatives to improve safety.

The death toll at Anglo Platinum’s operations reached 66 over three years from 2004.

Earlier in June, Anglo Platinum took the extraordinary step of committing itself to shut down its Rustenburg section for a staggered seven days to address safety at a cost of up to 15,000 refined platinum ounces. Twelve people have been killed at the operation so far this year.

Anglo Platinum implemented a safety initiative from 2005 to prevent all injuries and inculcate responsibility in all workers.

“To date we have trained all senior line management, from the chief executive to mine overseer level, and 3,000 of our supervisory level staff in these principles,” Raymond said. In 2006, Anglo Platinum recorded its lowest ever death rate of 18 deaths.

It has singled out its Amandelbult operation to find ways of establishing a zero-injury operation. Lessons learnt there will be rolled out to other operations and shared with the industry, Raymond said.