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Mining Weekly reports that the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) has expressed concern over the “potential for unfairness” following the announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa of a partnership agreement with France, Germany, the UK, the US and the European Union, whereby they committed to providing about R131-billion in finance to help SA achieve a just energy transition.
The transition will result in SA reducing its reliance on coal-fired power generation, while also helping to lower the country’s carbon emissions. In a statement on Tuesday, AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa said that, considering that these developed countries were already industrialised, built on coal-based energy resources and “exploitative working conditions” of mineworkers, there was the potential for unfairness as SA was still a developing country, and therefore still in the process of industrialising. He maintained that the country’s transition must be just, and that it would require “full commitment to the immediate socioeconomic needs of those workers who are directly and indirectly employed by the coal industry, as well as the communities they feed and the local economies they support”. Mathunjwa has issued an open letter to Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) Minister Gwede Mantashe requesting the department to “urgently convene a tripartite summit on ensuring a just transition from coal to cleaner energy sources”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard at Mining Weekly
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