Dineo Faku
GLOBAL mining giant Glencore has come under fire over plans to shut some of its local opencast coal operations due to soft commodity prices that will see the retrenchment of 628 employees.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) yesterday said it would take legal action if Glencore went ahead with the closure of Optimum Coal’s loss making opencast operations.
Glencore wanted to place the operations on care and maintenance and would consider reopening them if the economic conditions improve, the company said.
The company had allegedly rejected alternatives to the closure of the operations in meetings with NUM, the union said.
NUM had called for intervention of the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) as the company flouted laws in its efforts to close the mine operations.
If the company succeeded with the retrenchments, DMR had a big question to answer because the DMR was aware that it had failed to comply with Section 52 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, and Glencore had also failed to comply with their social and labour plan on severance packages, among others, NUM said.
“We are watching the space from now until July 31 as to what DMR will do to enforce compliance.
“If DMR fails, we are consulting with our lawyers as to what recourse we will take against DMR if they fail and Glencore succeeds with retrenchments,” the union added.
“If Optimum doesn’t comply, the DMR minister must take away the mining licence. This will be a testing case to keep government departments awake and do their work,” said William Mabapa, NUM deputy general secretary.
The closure of the opencast operations is part of Glencore’s overall strategy to reduce its overall production in South Africa by at least 5 million tons a year of high cost coal output.
The proposed closure of these operations would affect about 1 070 employees, the company said previously.
The affected areas would include the Optimum opencast operations, large portions of the coal processing plants, and associated support service.
Lucas Mohlala, the NUM Highveld regional chairman, blamed the company for leaving profitable production in the ground.
“They want to sterilise the minerals of this country. Their licence must be taken away,” added Mohlala.
Mohlala also said the company had turned down R1.2 billion from DMR towards the rehabilitation of the area in which the company operated.