FOUR of 10 employees recovered from the Masakhane mine at Sibanye-Stillwater’s West Rand Driefontein operations had passed away, the firm said today. Operating activity at the Masakhane shaft had been suspended, it said.
A further three employees remain trapped underground at the mine of which one has been located whilst the other two remain unaccounted for, the company said.
Sibanye-Stillwater said last night that a fall of ground following seismic activity had resulted in a total fo 13 employees being trapped. During the course of the evening, 10 employees were returned to safety of which six have survived the ordeal.
“Management of Sibanye-Stillwater wishes to express its sincere condolences to friends and family of the two deceased employees,” the company said in a statement this morning. “We thank everyone involved in the rescue operations since yesterday, especially the proto rescue teams and other stakeholders, who are continuing to make every effort to free and to locate the remaining and unaccounted for employees,” it said.
The National Union of Mineworkers said in a statement today that attempts to rescue employees were being hampered by dangerous fall of ground. “The NUM is angry and concerned at the rate at which mining incidents are happening at Sibanye Stillwater,” it said.
Sibanye-Stillwater said in its March quarter report on May 3 that its safety record at its gold and platinum group metal (PGM) operations had deteriorated. “After a record period of 155 days fatality-free for the gold operations, there were three separate incidents at our South African gold operations, in which four employees were fatally injured. At our South African PGM operations two employees were fatally injured in two separate incidents,” it said.
South African mines minister, Gwede Mantashe, said in a statement that seismic incidents accounted for about 30% of fatalities in mining during 2017. As a result, he had requested that a team consisting of representatives from his Department of Mineral Resources, the Council for Geoscience, the Mine Health and Safety Council, the CSIR as well as rock engineers and seismicity experts to “… look into this as a matter of urgency”.
Said Mantashe: “The gold sector has seen an increase in fatalities this year, with Sibanye-Stilwater as one of the main contributors. This suggests that greater attention be paid to issues of safety, particularly the protection of the lives of workers, as opposed to the insistence of chasing production”.
