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‘Making a plan’ may help tackle problems but poses safety issues – CoM’s Phakathi

SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS
Unofficial work practices, such as planisa, need to be incorporated when conceptualising factors that influence the organisation of work, safety and productivity in mining operations

SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS Unofficial work practices, such as planisa, need to be incorporated when conceptualising factors that influence the organisation of work, safety and productivity in mining operations

18th April 2014

By: Chantelle Kotze

  

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Formalised work practices in the deep-level mining sector can benefit much from the informal working practice of making a plan, or planisa, South African Chamber of Mines (CoM) deputy head of safety and sustain-able development Dr Sizwe Phakathi tells Mining Weekly.

This idea was proffered by Phakathi in his PhD research paper, titled ‘Getting on and getting by underground: Gold miners’ informal working practice of making a plan (planisa)’, published in the Journal of Organisational Ethnography last year.

Ingenuity Planisa is a pidgin expression that describes how mineworkers have to deploy their skills and ingenuity to tackle the daily problems posed by the endemic uncertainties and organisational dysfunctions of mining. Mineworkers also engage in planisa to offset production bottlenecks.

Engaging in planisa indicates that formal or standardised methods of work organisation are not necessarily more efficient in achieving certain goals than other methods of work organisation, says Phakathi.

“Although production crews chiefly make a plan to get the job done, they cannot get it done without first having made the workplace safe; and my research discovered that, owing to organisational constraints and managerial inefficiencies, underground production crews steal or borrow resources from other crews, such as timber packs or props, not only to mine the ore, but primarily to ensure safety in the stope.”

This ties in with the legislated culture transformation framework (CTF) for the South African mining sector, which focuses on the human element of safety and aims to understand and deal with the causes of unsafe behaviour at all levels of the organisation. The CTF also stipulates that there should be explicit consideration of organisational factors in incident and accident investigation systems.

Although mineworkers make a plan in the spirit of restoring during situations of organisational constraints, such as a lack of supplies or their desire to meet production targets and qualify for the production bonuses, the reality is that planisa has advantages and disadvantages.

Planisa is by law an unofficial work practice and if miners engaged in planisa they bypassed formal work standards, including their right to refuse to work in unsafe areas.

Phakathi’s research found that planisa appealed to shift bosses only if it did not result in injuries and accidents. Shift bosses and mine captains praised their charges if they safely made a plan in the quest of meeting production targets. However, in the event of injury or accident, mineworkers were blamed by their supervisors.

Therefore, Phakathi stresses the understanding of organisational, managerial and human factors that compel mineworkers to make a plan is crucial to the improvement of formalised work procedures.

He explains that the work practice of planisa has to be viewed in light of the interplay between official and unofficial aspects of work design. While the official aspects of work design help to understand the administrative part of the work organisation, they do not indicate much about the actual behaviour of organisational actors.

“We need to incorporate the unofficial devices, such as planisa, down the mine when concep-tualising factors that influence the organisation of work, safety and productivity in mining oper-ations, particularly in circumstances where workers find the official or administrative work procedures less helpful in achieving production goals” says Phakathi.

Going forward, he suggests that the positive aspects of planisa need to be harnessed for safety and productivity, while its unsafe, negative aspects need to be eliminated.

Teamwork

Apart from its unsafe aspects, planisa embodies teamwork, cooperation and the will to go the extra mile. With regard to production crews, making a plan entails looking after one another where safety and productivity are concerned.

Engaging in planisa also highlights the mineworkers’ experience, creativity, pride, innovativeness, commitment and resilience in finding informal on-the-job strategies to resolve production blockages and, in certain instances, making the workplace safer.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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