JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – As part of its Social and Labour Plan, precious metals mining company Sibanye Gold has handed over a state-of-the-art, multipurpose hall to the Free State Department of Education.

The R6.2-million facility, which supports the department’s strategy of incentivising top performing schools, will benefit learners and community members of the Free State town of Theunissen in the Masilonyana local municipality.

One of the beneficiaries, Taiwe Secondary School, has achieved a 100% pass rate for the past three years.

The 1 200-seat norm-exceeding hall will host Sibanye’s mathematics and science programme, which supports more than 140 grade 10 to 12 pupils a year from Taiwe Secondary School, with use of the facility for community functions generating additional income for the school to maintain the facility.

Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman described education as a critical component of near-mine community development and committed Sibanye to ongoing educational upliftment as part of the company’s commitment to transformation.

In 2014, Sibanye donated R25-million to the universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand for capacity building, facility upgrades and student support in the mining and engineering faculties and committed itself to the provision of vacation work for students from both universities to gain practical experience in their field of study.

The company has 305 bursars, 6 321 learnerships, 6 673 local community representatives undergoing adult education and another 6 000 being provided with portable skills.

In presenting results for the six months to December 31, Froneman emphasised the company’s vision of “superior value creation for all stakeholders” – not just shareholders – through mining multicommodity resources, predominantly in South Africa, as well as the modernisation of the South African mining industry as a whole, to enable the sector to shed its sunset tag.

He reported “real, substantial, material and sustainable” progress in accommodating employees in quality homes, and spoke of providing employment for near-mine communities through multistakeholder projects to re-establish the West Rand as an agricultural hub.

Together with Gold Fields, Sibanye has created 640 local economic development programme jobs and is targeting the creation of another 1 000 by the end of 2018.

It had spent R130-million on uplifting labour sending areas, built two clinics that service West Rand communities and has 17 school projects on its books.