Mines inspector compiling accident report – Minister

The acting chief inspector of mines is compiling a report on all accidents that occurred at Sibanye-Stillwater mining operations since the beginning of this year, Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe is quoted in Mining Weekly as saying. ‘This will enable us to take appropriate action, guided by the Mine Health and Safety Act, as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction,’ he said. ‘To date, Sibanye-Stillwater operations are responsible for 20 of the 45 fatalities reported since the beginning of the year. It therefore cannot be business as usual in how the regulator attends to this situation,’ he said. There would be an update once the report was completed. 

Sibanye-Stillwater has undertaken to provide support to bereaved families, which includes children’s education from school through university, said CEO Neal Froneman. The Citizen reports that SA’s third-largest producer of platinum and palladium is still counting the cost of losing employees in two unrelated incidents at the company’s Masakhane shaft in Driefontein and later at Kloof Ikamva in Westonaria. Froneman said Sibanye-Stillwater was ‘fully investigating the safety incidents’ together with the Department of Mineral Resources and trade union representatives ‘in order to identify the root causes’. Froneman said the investigation would afford the company ‘an opportunity to determine what needs to be done differently to avoid safety incidents’.