Today's Labour News

BL Premium reports that according to mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, his department will soon start compiling fatality and injury statistics of illegal miners to give society a hard look at the human cost of the activity.  

Illegal mining is rising in SA, with the miners known as zama zamas presenting a big risk to themselves and to the health and safety of the employees of legal mining operations.  Many illegal miners have died in accidents, often fatally injured in falls of ground or killed in factional rivalry.  The department wants to bring artisanal miners into the formal sector, perhaps by piggybacking their work on land held by larger mining companies, so that their mineral production contributes to the country’s economy rather than funding criminal syndicates.  The department would mull creating an artisanal mining sector, as large mines near the end of their lives, Mantashe said, noting it was early in the process and the exact nature of an artisanal mining industry would take time to formulate.  He comment further:  “We’ve tried it in Kimberley and it’s worked to a limited extent.  It’s a process under construction.  It must be developed because it will be food on the table of many starving mine workers who have skills.  Regulation is being developed.  We are looking at it carefully.  We don’t want to rush.  We don’t want to legitimise illegal mining by saying it is artisanal miners.”  The minister’s sentiments followed the release of mining fatalities data last Friday showing that SA mine deaths fell to a record low of 51 in 2019.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Allan Seccombe at BusinessLive (paywall access only)

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