What EFF wants from Chamber of Mines

Photo: @EconFreedomZA

Photo: @EconFreedomZA

Published Oct 27, 2015

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Johannesburg - The EFF handed a memorandum to the Chamber of Mines during the party’s Economic Freedom March on Tuesday.

The party said that the demands listed were directed to “all the mining companies which continue to extract South Africa’s mineral resources”.

“We expect each and every mining company to respond to the demands we are making and propose concrete programme of action on each and every aspect of these demands. Failure to do so within 30 days, the EFF and the people of South Africa will target individual mines and close their operations until they come with commitments to meet our demands,”, the party said.

The demands to the Chamber of Mines include:

1. Nationalisation of South Africa’s mines. The state should own and control a minimum of 60% of South Africa’s mines without compensation.

2. A minimum wage of R12 500, better salaries and wages for all mineworkers, and provision of full employment for workers currently employed as contract workers.

3. An immediate end and moratorium of retrenchments of workers in all Mining companies.

4. Local beneficiation and industrialisation of a minimum of 60% of the minerals extracted from beneath South Africa’s soil. The beneficiation should happen in the communities where mining happens.

5.Usage of locally produced goods and services for the upstream and downstream mining economic activities with the aim of expanding the economy and creating durable jobs.

6. Provision of education, skills and expertise to South African youth in order to capacitate them to play a meaningful role in the entire mining value-chain.

7. Betterment of working conditions in all mines to prevent avoidable fatalities and diseases.

8. Construction and building of better houses for all mineworkers, with proper sanitation, electricity, water, schools, hospitals, sporting facilities and all other basic needs.

9. We demand all mining companies to offer explanations on why they have not complied with the required social labour plans expected from each mining company.

10. An end to base erosion, transfer pricing and profit shifting by all mining companies that have trading subsidiaries in the tax havens.

11. An end to creation of shelf companies in tax havens, which serve as nothing but mechanism to avoid taxes through intra-company trade.

12. An end to import-parity pricing on the South Africa minerals to boost the manufacturing, industrialisation and infrastructure development.

13. Active involvement of mining corporations in the development of mining communities, particularly on the construction and maintenance of roads, health facilities, schools, technical training colleges, and other public infrastructure.

14. Local manufacturing of supplies and other necessities required for mining, including beneficiation and industrialisation.

Development of a concrete social and labour development model, which will ensure that communities around the mines are developed out of the proceeds of mining.

15. An end to threats of disinvestment by mining capital.

16. Compensation of mining communities that continue to suffer diseases and infections as a result of Mining and minerals’ extraction, particularly the asbestos communities.

17. We demand the compensation of the families of all mineworkers who were injured in Marikana massacre and the compensation of the families that lost their family members during the massacre.

18. Mining companies must stop colluding with the State to kill workers who demand a living wage.

19.Compensation of all ex-mineworkers who have contracted diseases during the course of work and have not been paid their pensions.

20. We demand the formal recognition and integration of small scale mining with proper safety standards in order to allow ordinary South Africans to participate in mining,

Source: EFFighters.org.za

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