Private sector employer organisation the Chamber of Mines (CoM) safety and sustainability advisor Sietse van der Woude tells Mining Weekly that the organisation has only one goal and that is to reach a zero fatality and zero injury level within the organisation, and that it is working very closely with the government to reach this target.

Statistics show that, since 1999, there has been a decrease in mine fatalities of almost 50%, from 309 deaths in 1999, to 165 deaths recorded at the end of last year.

"There has been a significant improvement in these statistics and all the stakeholders deserve recognition for this. The government, the unions and, of course, the industry have been playing a major role in these improvements," says Van der Woude

Although the numbers are down, the industry still faces significant challenges when it comes to increasing safety and protecting the lives of the people that work in the mines of South Africa. One of the major points of concern is the culture around mine safety.

Van der Woude stresses that, when it comes to safety, there are no excuses.

"Many people argue that, because South Africa has deeper level mines, compared with countries such as Canada and Australia, our safety will be worse, but this cannot be used as an excuse any more. When lives are at stake, one accident is one too many," he says.

Seismicity remains a significant concern in deep level mines and, although there is no technology available that can predict when and to what degree a seismic event will occur, Van der Woude says that even though this technology is not available, it does not mean that fatalities should happen.

"We are fully aware that seismic events could happen and this just means that we need to assume these events will occur and structure our mining methods and support accordingly so that we can avoid these fatalities and injuries," he says.

The Industry spent about R150-million on research over the last ten years and the number of fatalities from seismic events reduced from 77 to 23, during this period.

Through the Mine Health and Safety Council, the CoM is participating in an initiative called ‘Changing Minds, Changing Mines' and this will incorporate this mine safety culture.

Van der Woude says that the idea behind this initiative is to get the different companies involved to look at what each is doing with regard to leadership and safety cultures, and then benchmark each one against the framework, work performance and standards from the initiative.

When it comes to mine safety culture, chief executives agreed that the industry needs to adopt a more caring and participatory approach to this.

"The industry needs to be more willing to put the blame aside when something goes wrong. We need to get out of this mindset that we find ourselves in and try and rectify the situation, and avoid future mistakes by learning from what has gone wrong instead of pointing fingers," van der Woude says.

The research phase of the project has been completed and the framework was discussed by the chamber, unions and the government.

A further area of concern is that of capacity building for mine health and safety. In the mining industry, many of the employees have low education levels but are working in a very complex and arduous environment, where each day is different and the surroundings change constantly.

Stakeholders agree to train 40 000 health and safety representatives over the next five years and to ensure that for each team in the mining industry, there is one elected health and safety representative. For this initiative, Van der Woude explains that the CoM hopes to move away from the traditional training methods, because it feels that these methods are out dated and wants to explore more innovative methods using technology, animation and simulations.

The CoM has established, with the assistance of other stakeholders, a learning hub, which, in essence, helps the CoM member companies learn from each other. This is the biggest project that the CoM has launched in recent years, with the hub being established at the end of last year.

"We have a pocket of excellence that involves mines that are performing to world standards and the idea behind this is to make it easier for other companies to learn from the examples that these leader mines set. The learning hub will identify the leading practices in the industry and then test these practices in other areas for other mines to adopt," Van der Woude explains.

Three teams have already been established for this project, all of which relate to the challenges faced in deep level mining, which includes dust, noise and falls of ground. Later, a transport and machinery team will be brought in.

A strong focus of the learning hub will be on people issues. Van der Woude explains that, no matter what the leading practices are, whether these are from a technological or a procedural point of view, worker participation and leadership issues need to be properly tackled for the leading practice to be sustainable.

He reports that a number of significant improvements have been made in mine safety over the past 15 years and, although South Africa's mine safety legislation is of the best in the world, the challenge lies in its enforcement.

To subscribe to Mining Weekly's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.