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8 October, 2007
Even though none of the 3,200 miners trapped for up to 38 hours last week at Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine died, the near catastrophe re-emphasises the need for beefed up safety measures in the world’s mining industry.
The miners, members of ICEM affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), became trapped after a 15-metre piece of steel pipe from a compressed air chamber exploded, and dropped 2.2 kilometres down an elevator shaft. The steel pipe severed electrical cables and shattered steelwork connected to the mine’s main elevator.
Rescue commenced through a smaller ventilation shaft that is also used to lift rock and waste from the mine. Rescue teams placed a cage in that shaft and it was able to free 75 miners each half-hour. NUM dispatched shop stewards into the deep shafts in order to calm miners and to bring them bread and water.
But the accident again underscores the necessity for better mine safety techniques at a time of climbing prices and rapid extraction practices of natural resources. Harmony purchased the 30-year-old Elandsrand mine and an adjoining gold mine from AngloGold Ashanti in 2001, at a time when production had dropped. Harmony saw the potential to mine even deep into the earth, and planned a new mine under the existing one that the company expects to complete by 2011.
NUM members were trapped some 2,200 metres below the ground. Gold mines in South Africa are particular deep, and gold mining in the country is labour intensive. As higher commodity prices take hold, mining companies forge deeper underground, making the technical challenges greater and the safety costs higher. The deeper the mines go, the greater the likelihood of seismic activity. This puts miners at tremendous risk.
The NUM is convinced that lack of maintenance, coupled with the continuous, 24-hour mining operations now being implemented across South Africa’s mining industry, is to blame for this equipment failure at Elandsrand.
NUM President Senzeni Zokwana
“We suspect negligence. Because of continuous operations there is not time to make adequate checks,” said NUM President Senzeni Zokwana, who also is President of the ICEM. “Our members are dying, and will continue to die, until we change the culture of mining.”
The lesson from last week’s Elandsrand mine, Zokwana told an American broadcast network, “is that we need to put safety number one in planning, and make sure that at all times people can be saved quickly.” Following the early morning accident on 3 October that trapped 3,000 men and 200 women at Elandsrand, Harmony Gold at first predicted rescue efforts would be completed by late that afternoon. It was not until 8 PM on 4 October when the last of the 3,200 came up the emergency shaft.
“We are very much concerned,” said Zokwana. “We believe that this should be a call to the industry that secondary exits underground be mandated.”
NUM’s chairperson of Health and Safety, Peter Bailey, repeated the need for mining houses to changes focus. “When it comes to production targets, the companies make no mistakes in meeting them,” he said. “But when it comes to safety, we hear rhetoric and philosophy.”
In a 5 October Wall Street Journal article on the Elandsrand near disaster, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda said, “There’s a rush into the investment of mining in general,” adding that quick development is difficult to manage, even for companies and countries with good safety records.
In South Africa, the world’s biggest producer of precious minerals, mining deaths so far in 2007 far outpace those of preceding years. The current death toll makes a 2003 promise by the industry of achieving zero workplace deaths by 2013 ring hollow.
Only five days before Harmony’s accident, four miners of AngloGold were killed due to a rock fall caused by seismic activity in the depths of the Mponeng mine, which is near the Elandsrand mine. And just yesterday, 7 October, the bodies of 23 miners, who were illegally mining a closed Harmony Gold shaft inside the Helena mine in Free State province, were pulled from deep underground. They perished after a fire ignited on 18 September. Harmony had been mining other shafts of the Helena mine.
This past summer, the NUM called for an urgent tripartite meeting to resuscitate South Africa’s Mining Health and Safety Summit in order to address the many current deficiencies in mine safety. Then, the NUM said mining houses must begin to “walk the talk” when it comes to implementing safe practices. In South Africa, following last week’s Elandsrand accident near Carletonville along the country’s gold belt, the time for action with a new culture, backed by capital improvements to health and safety techniques, has now fully risen to the surface.