Johannesburg - Miners at the Lily Gold Mine in Barberton, Mpumalanga, have been forced to live on handouts after the cash-strapped company failed to pay salaries as it struggles to secure funds from risk averse investors.
Gideon du Plessis, the general secretary at trade union Solidarity, said 500 mineworkers, where three miners have been trapped underground since February, had received R750 food vouchers each from the South Africa Social Security Agency following negotiations between the mine’s Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) and the Department of Social Development.
Read: Recovering trapped Lily Mine trio could take months
Humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers has been involved in distributing food parcels, hygiene packs and disposable nappies. About 900 employees of the cash-strapped Australian owned mine, which applied for business rescue in April, have not been paid their salaries for April and May.
Mine operations have ground to a halt since February after rocks fell in the entrance of a shaft, trapping Pretty Nkambule, Yvonne Mnisi and Solomon Nyerende in a container, while 76 other miners survived.
Du Plessis said the BRPs had also negotiated for schools to exempt miners from paying school fees for their children.
He said the reason the mine could not access funding was because it had mostly focused on retrieving the bodies.
“The government is putting pressure on the mine, but it’s about more than the recovery of three bodies. It is important for the government to understand that to save 900 jobs is as important as saving three bodies,” Du Plessis added.
Efforts to rescue the three employees have so far been unsuccessful as the shaft cannot be reached.
Lily mine now wants to develop and construct a new decline shaft about 500 metres from the original entrance.
“As soon as the company receives funding it will be able to offer employees voluntary severance packages. Negotiations between local and international funders are ongoing, but have not been finalised,” Du Plessis said.
Lily mine has significant ore reserve, which will last in excess of 10 years, which made it an attractive investment, the company has previously said. The company promised to pay the families of the three missing workers R200 000 each and the 76 survivors R50 000.
The Industrial Development Corporation said it had received an application for R250 million funding from Lily mine owner Vantage Goldfields. Earlier this month, the mine indicated that employees could begin to apply for voluntary severance packages due to operational reasons and a lack of funds.
An employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the miners had been paid vouchers. “Last month they paid us R650 and promised to give us more on Friday, but they did not pay. We are stuck. We cannot resign because we will not get money.”
Jimmy Gama, the national treasurer of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, the majority union at the mine, said it had written to President Jacob Zuma for help.
“We wrote to President Zuma to ask him to intervene. President Zuma must allocate disaster funds to help the employees,” he said.
Gama said there was hope. “The mine has life to operate; there are still gold deposits… We need a solution.”
Meanwhile, media reported yesterday that the mine was close to clinching a R200m deal with one of three investors, which would enable the resumption of operations.
BUSINESS REPORT