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Bloomberg reports that Natascha Viljoen, chief executive officer of Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), says women don’t feel safe working underground in SA mines.
While the mining industry’s toxic culture is no secret, an explosive report from Rio Tinto Group in February laid bare the scale and severity of the problem. The abuse of women in mines from Australia to SA is increasing investor scrutiny of the world’s biggest mining companies. Viljoen said at a mining conference on Wednesday: “I was not surprised by the Rio Tinto report. If anybody tells me we don’t face the same challenge in South Africa, I would say you are naive.” The Rio Tinto investigation found that more than a quarter of female workers had experienced sexual harassment and almost half of all staff have been victims of bullying. Sexual harassment in the cages — or elevators — has been a problem for years in SA. While the abuse of women was also a societal issue in SA, the mining industry had to take responsibility for addressing the challenges it faced, the Amplats CEO said, adding that “we can be very impactful on how we address these issues in society and in our physical design of the workplace.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Felix Njini at Moneyweb
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