Police go beyond the call of duty

The unemployed survivors and the families of the three trapped miners at Lily Mine received food parcels during an event held on Friday at Louieville Thusong Service Centre.

Provincial commissioner of the SAPS, Lt Gen Mondli Zuma, in partnership with the department of agriculture, the Gift of the Givers Foundation, SPAR Lowveld DC, and Cool Point handed over the parcels.

The premier, David Mabuza, also visited the community on Thursday, fulfilling a promise made after Sopa.

Solomon Nyirende, Yvonne Mnisi, and Pretty Nkambule were trapped underground when a lamp-room container they had been working in fell into a sinkhole created by a collapsed crown pillar on February 5 last year.

They have not yet been retrieved. The search for them was suspended when the mine said it needed R200 million.

The mine has also retrenched staff members, many of whom say they have not been paid since last year.This affected many families, since their breadwinners were left unemployed.

According to Zuma, the purpose of the event was to assist the community. When they previously visited the area, they realised that there is a high level of poverty and unemployment.

“As SAPS we saw the need to make a contribution. We do not only do policing, we also do our best to help where we can.

“Looking at the outcome of this event, we feel that what we came here to do has been achieved. It is not everything needed. It is also not sustainable, although the community can sustain itself if the programmes introduced by the premier materialise and the community participate in them.

“For now, I feel it will alleviate the level of poverty to some extent,” said Zuma

According to Petrus Ngomana, MEC for safety and security, the community needed to see results, because the government promised the people assistance and that they would go to them regardless of their political affiliation.

“Our people are suffering here. This is the beginning.

“Today we are here with various stakeholders and the premier was here yesterday, to show that we care about what happened to these people. When the incident occurred, we became close with the residents and we learned that the issue is not only what happened at the mine. The entire community is in poverty. We need to do something, as the government, to assist them.”

Ngomana’s message to the community was that they must appreciate this, and they must also play their role, because government alone will never succeed in this.

“I think they are a bit lucky, because all the departments of government are here, and we are here to make sure that they are safe. They will receive running water. In the long run, those who are trapped in the mine, even if we are not sure if they are still alive, will be rescued.”

Bard Kazi, corporate and government liaison manager of the Gift of the Givers Foundation, said they have been engaging with the community through representatives since early last year.

“Some things have been done, but the affected miners who are on the list are still unemployed, and their situation is bad.

“This has a huge impact on the socio-economic situation of the area, where crime and domestic abuse have increased. It is quite a hopeless and sad situation for many of these miners. We brought food parcels, which we hope will sustain them for weeks, and if the need arises we will do another drop.

“These are short-term measures. I think something which is more substantive needs to be done. From what we understand from Lily Mine management, there’s no hope of resuscitating the mine in the short term at least. We will give our support, we just hope for a more lasting solution.”

The families of the three trapped miners were in attendance, and they also received food parcels.

Mnisi’s father, Elmon Mnisi, said that as a family they appreciated the contributions, though they still wanted their children to be retrieved from the mine.

“We just want to say to these people, God’s people who are assisting us, we see what they are doing and may God bless them.

“Our wish is that at the end they must receive the power to remove our trapped children from the mine so that we may be free because we cannot move freely knowing that we left our families here. We want to be free to continue living lives but we cannot do that until those children are rescued.”