Gold companies: More housing for miners on the cards

SOUTH Africa’s biggest gold companies plan to build and sell more houses to employees to ease the social pressures that led to the deaths of at least 44 people in 2012 and a record-long strike in platinum last year. Addressing the country’s legacy migrant-labour and housing problems was “a priority,” AngloGold Ashanti, Sibanye Gold, Harmony Gold Mining and Gold Fields said in Johannesburg yesterday. Creating affordable accommodation and encouraging home ownership is seen by the mining companies as a way of improving their employees’ lot while avoiding above-inflation pay increases. The companies, due to begin biennial wage talks in May, are seeking to avoid a repeat of the five-month strike in the country’s platinum industry last year that crippled output. – Bloomberg