MINING SAFETY AUDIT FALLS SHORT ON SKILLS

Buyelwa Sonjica, is fast becoming to Minerals and Energy, what Manto is to the Department of Health - an embarrassment! First the Eskom debarcle and now this!

As for the mining sector - wake up people! You don't have to wait for an audit to get your ducks in a row! You know exactly what the safety requirements are, make sure that they are in place and get it sorted. How difficult can that be?

That's like hearing a noise in the engine and ignoring it until the car comes to a dead holt and the engine is seized!

For heaven's sake, it's not rocket science!



Mining safety audit short on skills
October 8, 2007
By Justin Brown

Johannesburg - President Thabo Mbeki's call for all 700 local mines to have their safety checked could founder as the state's mine safety watchdog is facing chronic skills shortages and high turnover.

Thabo Gazi, department of minerals and energy chief inspector of mines, said on Friday that one in six of the positions in his agency, which has an annual budget of R153 million, were empty and that his staff, consisting of inspectors, doctors and engineers, were regularly being poached by the mining industry. Buyelwa Sonjica, minister of minerals and energy, said at a mine health and safety summit that she was concerned about the shortage of skills in all safety disciplines.

Mbeki had called to ask her to audit all mines, not only gold mines, she added. Failure to reduce the mine deaths and risks involved in mining was not an option, Sonjica said. However, Gazi said the safety audit of mines would have to be "prioritised" given the department's limited resources. Mbeki's call comes in the wake of the accident at Harmony Gold's Elandsrand gold mine near Carletonville, which trapped 3 200 workers underground. Gazi was not able to say when the department had last done a safety audit of Elandsrand. Harmony spokesperson Amelia Soares said the company welcomed the move to audit all local mines.

"Harmony employs 54 000 people and last year, regrettably, 27 employees died in work-related incidents on our mines," she added.


The Harmony event followed one of the worst accidents in the mining industry this year: four people died at AngloGold Ashanti's Mponeng mine near Carletonville last month. Sonjica said the accident reiterated her "need for urgent action". Steve Lenahan, an AngloGold Ashanti spokesperson, did not return calls for comment and Gold Fields spokesperson Nerina Bodasing was not available to comment. At AngloGold's operations in South Africa, 23 people have died this year. In the platinum sector, Ilse Meiring, media representative for Impala Platinum (Implats), said there was no one available at the company to comment on Mbeki's call. Implats' safety has deteriorated from seven mine deaths in the year to June 2006 to 13 fatalities in the 12 months to June this year. Simon Tebele, an Anglo Platinum spokesperson, said: "We are not sure how this is going to pan out. Therefore we will wait until we are approached by the department."

Ralph Havenstein, Anglo Platinum's former chief executive, got the boot earlier this year after the group's Rustenberg mine had a significant deterioration in safety: 12 workers died in the first half of this year, compared with two in the same period last year. Dorian Emmett, Anglo's head of sustainable development, said the group had "no problem" with a safety audit being done. Last year 199 people died and 4 000 people were injured in South African mines.