Johannesburg - Royal Bafokeng Platinum is extending credit to help more than 3,500 employees own homes as South Africa’s mine owners face a year-end deadline to improve the living conditions of their workers.
The 2.8 billion rand project involves the provision of financing to assist workers who previously lived in single-sex hostels or shanty towns, Collin Alexander, the company’s head of human resources, said today in Rustenburg, about 100 miles (161 kilometres) northwest of Johannesburg.
Royal Bafokeng plans to offer loans to all its employees by 2019 for houses costing at least 500,000 rand.
As many as a quarter of the Johannesburg-based company’s workers have impaired credit records, according to Alexander, who said monthly repayments will start at 2,900 rand on loans that carry interest rates of inflation plus 1 percentage point.
Royal Bafokeng concluded a deal in July that will lift the monthly pay of its lowest-paid workers to more than 12,000 rand over three years.
The company avoided the five-month strike that cost South Africa’s three biggest platinum producers 24 billion rand in revenue as industrial action in the country escalated after police shot dead 34 protesting workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in 2012.
South Africa’s mine owners, including Anglo American and BHP Billiton, have until the end of this year to improve housing for employees, who lived in crowded, single-sex hostels during apartheid.
Mine operators are promoting home-ownership projects as workers often spent accommodation allowances on other things, resulting in the build-up of tin- shack settlements around mines.
Better Place
The first phase of the Royal Bafokeng project saw the completion of 422 houses, each of at least 80 square meters, inside a perimeter fence.
“This is the first time I’m living in my own house since I was born,” Christopher Lebelo, 55, an explosives dispenser at the company’s mine, said from the living room of his new house.
“There are no thugs or noisemakers here; it is better than any of the places I’ve stayed before.” - Bloomberg News