SIBANYE-Stillwater had largely stamped out illegal mining at its South African gold mines after spending R300m on technology that screens entry points to the operations, said Reuters in an article today.
“It still costs us so I don’t know if we will ever declare a victory, but we are at the end of stage one,” said Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater in an interview with Reuters. “My biggest concern about illegal mining is the corruption of our supervisors and our employees,” he said.
“That just sets a path for creating a rotten organisation. Everybody gets bribed and the integrity of the business just gets undermined,” he added.
The company has arrested nearly 1,400 illegal miners at its South African gold shafts last year. It spent R300m last year and will spend another R300m this year on “… access and biometric controls at the entry points to its gold mines,” said Reuters.
According to data provided to Reuters by Sibanye, it made 797 arrests in 2017 linked to illegal mining at its Cooke operations and 1,383 overall. In June, it made more than 500 arrests, above the 443 arrests in 2016 as a whole.
