Today's Labour News

newsThis news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.

NUM backs Gwede Mantashe in call to sustain coal mining, use

Details

numMining Weekly reports that following Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe having voiced his concern earlier this week that SA’s coal mining sector could not be allowed to diminish and fade away, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has added its support for efforts to sustain the industry.

Currently, global climate change mitigation advocacy is centred on phasing out coal mining and coal-fired generation plants as burning the fossil fuel adds significantly to greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. In a statement, the NUM blamed climate change on “developed countries” that have used fossil fuels to build their economies and argued that SA should not have to “sacrifice our economic development so they can continue to pollute”, despite many developed nations having now taken steps to reduce their GHG emissions. Mantashe acknowledged that although SA’s coal mining and coal-burning industries were presented with “binding constraints”, the coal mining industry still needed to take steps to save itself because many people depended on coal mining jobs. He also warned about many jobs being lost if Eskom were to close some of its old and inefficient coal-fired power stations. NUM president Joseph Montisetse says the union fully supported Mantashe despite him being labelled a “coal fundamentalist” and a “fossil fuel dinosaur” by detractors. The NUM said to hoped there would “still be a lot of coal generation in South Africa by 2030, or even after that”, and added that because SA had an abundance of coal reserves, it would be “very irresponsible and reckless” for the country to stop using coal.

  • Read the full original of the report in the above regard at Mining Weekly
  • Read too, Mantashe tells mining CEOs not to be ‘shy to fight for coal’, at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)


Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page