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30 October, 2006
ICEM affiliate, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), again called for an absolute zero level of tolerance on health and safety incidences inside South Africa’s mining industry.
That message again had to be delivered following a pair of seismic events, which caused death on 23 October at AngloGold Ashanti’s TauTona gold mine near Carletonville, South Africa. The tremors brought cave-ins and resulted in the deaths of five miners, who were working some 2,700 metres underground in one of the world’s deepest mines.
The NUM questions why miners are even working in an environment so hazardous. AngloGold’s TauTona mine had already seen the deaths of another five miners, with ten others severely injured, earlier this year in similar rock falls. Tremors struck the mine southwest of Johannesburg in separate occurrences in January and February. In July 2005, two more miners were killed at TauTona when a tremor caused a rock slide.
The two 23 October tremors, which struck near a production seam nearly three kilometres inside the earth, occurred 25 minutes apart, and registered magnitudes of 1.9 and 2.3 on the Richter scale. The resulting rock slides also injured two other miners, one seriously.
South African Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjea questioned the logic of miners working so deep in such environments. “In view of an industry-accepted target of zero fatalities, gold mines are the worst performers,” she said, in a statement on the most recent TauTona tragedy.
AngloGold produced 120,000 ounces of gold from TauTona in fiscal quarter ending in June 2006. That figure represents 8.5% of the company’s total global gold production.