weeks in terms of safety, after two workers were fatally injured Harmony Gold Mining’s Kusasalethu mine as a result of seismic activity. They were the company’s eighth and ninth fatalities for the year, bringing the total number across the country’s mining sector to 55 this year. Last year, this figure was at 43.
“This is the second year of regression in the safety performance since the 2019 record low of 51 fatalities,” the Minerals Council said in a statement. Accordingly, the employers’ organisation recommitted itself to reversing this trend and achieving fatality-free operations by re-evaluating and re-energising their safety programmes.
According to the Council, technology must be an integral part of addressing this challenge so that mineworkers are given the assurance that they will return home unharmed every day. “With the regression we are experiencing, we need to put a lot more focus on technology and modernisation to improve skills and mining methods to keep employees safe,” Themba Mkhwanazi, chair of the CEO Zero Harm Leadership Forum, which is a part of the Minerals Council, said.
These recent calls for increasing safety in South Africa’s mining sector comes amid a new forum set up by five of the top mining unions in the country in order to address mine modernisation to extend the lives of mines, thereby saving current jobs and creating new opportunities.
