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29 June, 2009
Two miners in South Africa died on 20 June deep inside South Africa’s biggest gold mine, the Driefontein mine owned by Gold Fields. They died when an earth tremor, registering 3.5 on the Richter scale, caused a shift of rock. Eight other miners were rescued, three of whom were hospitalized. One miner is suffering with serious injuries.
It was the second accident caused by a shift ground at Gold Fields’ mines in a month. On 20 May, two miners died deep in the earth at the company’s Kloof mine near Westonia in West Rand. A day earlier, one miner at Kloof died in a similar but separate accident.
The tragedy that occurred 20 June at Driefontein near Carletonville caused mine production to halt for four days. The spokesman for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Lesiba Seshoka, called the latest accident deeply disappointing. “There doesn’t seem to be any willingness to improve safety,” he said.
Gold Fields, the world’s fourth largest gold miner with operations in Australia, Ghana, Peru, and South Africa, said in a statement to financial markets late last week that it has had 20 mining fatalities since July 2008. All have occurred in South Africa. In the first six months of 2008, 23 of 87 mine fatalities in South Africa occurred in mines operated by Gold Fields.