The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Monday confirmed that the union was planning to hold a one-day safety strike at gold producer Gold Fields' four local operations, in light of the high number of deaths that occurred at the miner's operations this year.

Union spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka told Mining Weekly Online that the strike, scheduled to take place next month, would be Gold Fields specific, and not industry-wide, such as the safety strike held by the union in December last year.

The one-day strike was aimed at forcing miners to focus on safety, and led to many of mines reporting substantial output losses.

"There have been some improvements in some areas [of the industry] with some companies, but we have seen ever-increasing numbers [of mine deaths] specific to Gold Fields," explained Seshoka.

He noted that of specific concern to the NUM were the nine deaths that occurred at the producer's South Deep gold mine on May 1.

Gold Fields spokesperson Daniel Thole on Monday said the mine had not yet officially been informed of any strike action by union members at its operations, as required under the Labour Relations Act.

News agency Reuters last week reported that the producer had the worst mine death record in South Africa to date, this year, accounting for almost half of the South African industry total of 85 deaths.

Deaths in South African mines had declined by 22% to 85 in the first half of the year, compared with the first half of 2007.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) also slammed the company's poor safety record at the weekend, calling for better enforcement of health and safety regulations.

"The high rate of mine deaths is underscored by the fact that the Department of Justice has not made a single prosecution in the past six years despite the fact that more than 1 500 mine deaths were reported in the same period," said DA spokesperson for minerals and energy, Hendrik Schmidt.

The 320 000-strong NUM also recently warned that it would join labour federation Cosatu's campaign of rolling mass action to oppose the rising cost of living.

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