Sibanye-Stillwater chief executive Neal Froneman. Picture: Supplied
Sibanye-Stillwater chief executive Neal Froneman has every reason to be a worried man.
Once hailed as the benchmark performer when it came to safety, this year alone has seen Sibanye-Stillwater’s mining operations suffering from a spate of safety incidents – two accounting for 12 deaths.
With a workforce of over 65 000 employees, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange-listed company is the third-largest producer of platinum and palladium and features among the world’s top gold-producing companies.
The latest incident, at the company’s Kloof Ikamva shaft in Westonaria, has now claimed five lives following the retrieval this week of another deceased worker’s body. Gas and poor underground ventilation have been cited as the reasons for the accident.
Occurring in the wake of last month’s incident at the Masakhane shaft in Driefontein, where seven workers were killed due to a seismic activity, Sibanye-Stillwater’s proud safety record has now been tarnished.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Citizen, Froneman said he was “appalled at these tragedies”.
“We are committed to addressing the regression in safety at our operations by implementing the changes required to make our workplace safe,” he said. “After rolling out a revised safety strategy in 2017, we experienced a solid improvement in all our safety indicators during the year with no fatalities in the final quarter at our gold operations.”
But things changed in February when the company experienced the first incident in Driefontein. He said the underground incidents arose “from very different causes not related to each other”.
Despite the setbacks, Froneman is determined “to restore our previous safety records” by ushering changes.
He dispelled as “untrue” claims by trade unions that the company was “putting profits before the safety of employees”. The company, he said, did not condone “risk-taking to deliver production”, adding the safety of employees was “a primary concern for us”.
He explained: “If it is not safe to produce we expect conditions to be fixed before work can resume. There is substantial evidence that well-organised workplaces are both safe and productive and that is our aim.
“Employees are our most important stakeholders and we would rather not mine if we cannot provide a safe environment.”
On allegations that refusal by employees to work in unsafe areas could lead to dismissals, he responded: “These allegations are untrue and counter to our health-and-safety policy, and we do not condone anyone being forced to work if it is unsafe, or employees being disciplined if they exercise the right to withdraw when conditions are not safe.
“Any supervisor who has been found to force workers to work in unsafe conditions is liable to disciplinary action.”
On how the company plans to avoid future tragedies, he said: “We are fully investigating the incidents together with the department of mineral resources and representative trade unions.
“While the safety record of the past few months is not acceptable, we remain committed to restoring our safety performance to where it should be,” he said.
– brians@citizen.co.za
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