Mining Weekly reports that Harmony Gold CEO Peter Steenkamp said on Tuesday that the spate of violent attacks on gold smelting plants were of great concern. There were reportedly 19 attacks on gold facilities last year in which two security personnel were murdered.
Steenkamp said that it was apparent that a number of criminal syndicates had begun robbing gold plants. “We’ve had attempts on our plants to steal gold. Gold was stolen at Kalgold. There was a further attempt at Kalgold and fortunately for us, they didn’t manage to steal anything from the plant, but it is a big concern,” he stated. Indicating that they had raised this issue with the Minister, he went on to say: “What we’ve done is to sharpen up on our security. We’ve spent more than R30-million in capital in the last three years just improving our walls around the plants and making sure we’ve got areas where people can’t get through. We spend a lot of operating expenditure on improving security around our plants, which has worked because we see that with the last Kalgold attempt, they could not get into the smelt house, so the things we put in place did work for us.” The Minerals Council SA (previously called the Chamber of Mines) last week called for urgent intervention by the Ministers of Police and of Mineral Resources and Energy to investigate the violent assaults by heavily armed intruders on mining company targets, especially smelt houses.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard and watch a video interview with Steenkamp at Mining Weekly
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