Organised labour has pressed for a review of the working patterns and holidays bottlenecks in the mining sector after Chief Inspector of Mines, David Msiza, said Thursday that most mining incidents and fatalities happened during the day shifts.
This comes after the Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources reported vast improvements in mine safety and reduction of fatalities for the 2024 calendar year in what has been dubbed the safest period on record.
Minister Gwede Mantashe reported that the mining industry recorded forty-two fatalities in 2024, marking the lowest ever number of fatalities in the history of the country’s mining, which represents a 24% year-on-year improvement, compared to 55 fatalities in 2023.
Msiza said according to analysis of trends, most and the highest number of accidents happen between 10am and 12 noon, which raised concern that most of the managers and supervisors were present.
“We will sit down with the sector and the Minerals Council to look at the trends and what we can do, we will further dissect the information for any underlying causes and root causes,” he said.
Msiza also outlined that most incidents happened in the face area, especially the hard rock mines, followed by cross cuts and drop points, haulages, open-cast mines, as well as underground boulder and pillar centres.
Phuthuma Manyathi, deputy president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), said workers were better to come up with proposals as they were on the mining face and proposed the 10am to 12 noon break, as well as a holiday on August 16th as part of fatigue management.
“There are very few holidays in the second part of the year, and we are calling for a holiday if we are talking fatigue management. How do you manage fatigue if you do not put a worker holiday there? You don’t have a date, we are giving you the 16th of August,” he said.
“The issue of the silly season will always be there for fatigue management. Unless if we configure, we look seriously at the calendar and say let’s find a holiday, 24 August is already very late. If we get a holiday we will perform better.”
Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, spokeperson for the National Union of Metals Workers of South Africa (Numsa), said whilst the statistics showed signs of improvements, the union continued to demand zero fatalities and zero illnesses in the mining sector.
“We need every worker in the mining sector to feel safe. These are bread winners and their families depend on them,” she said.
“We continue to call on mine bosses to take health and safety seriously, so that the goal.of zero incidents and zero deaths can be achieved.”
Minerals Councils head of communications, Alan Seccombe, said the Council would this year launch Khumbul’ekhaya Version 2 - a refined and evolutionary strategy derived from CEO Heartfelt Conversations to build on the learnings gathered since the launch of the CEO-led health and safety initiative in 2019.
“This strategy embodies our collective vision of Zero Harm, returning every worker home safely and healthy every day,” Seccombe said.
“It also emphasises a proactive, human-centred approach to health and safety, incorporating new technologies, robust risk management practices, adoption of proven leading practices, and closer collaboration with all stakeholders.”
In an Industrial Production note, Investec senior economist Annabel Bishop said as the country has de-industrialised over the past 30 years, with the industrial sector losing about 10% of GDP, from 28% of GDP in 1993 to 18% of GDP last year.
This comprised of manufacturing, mining, and electricity production, with the mining sector falling over the period in real, adjusted for the effect of inflation terms, by -11.8%, as the sector became smaller, despite metals and minerals’ commodities prices rising by more than 200% in the period.
“The mining sector continues to struggle, faced by regulatory hurdles and complexities as well as severely insufficient freight capacity, which reduces its export potential,” she said.
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