Black-controlled miner African Rainbow Minerals (Arm) improved its safety performance significantly during the second half of 2008, with its Modikwa mine, in Mpumalanga, achieving four-million fatality-free shifts and the Beeshoek mine, in the Northern Cape, 6 000 fatality-free shifts.

The company is targeting ‘zero fatalities’ during 2009.

“The Dwarsrivier mine, in Mpumalanga, recorded four entries into the Department of Minerals and Energy’s 1 000 Fatality-Free Production Shifts competition when the mine recorded 4 098 fatality-free production shifts in the second half of last year,” CEO André Wilkens said at the company’s interim results presentation, in Johannesburg, last week.

However, Arm recorded two fatalities in the second half of last year, the first being at the company’s Kumani iron-ore mine, in the Northern Cape, where a mineworker died as a result of asphyxiation despite an extensive educational campaign to warn against the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. The second incident occurred at the Nkomati platinum mine, in Mpumalanga, where a mineworker died in a rockslide in an area where significant platinum stockpiles existed.

Wilkens reported that the company was carrying out investigations into the events preceding the rockslide.

The platinum stockpiles have since been moved to a safer area.

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