NUM alarmed after another worker dies at Sibanye Stillwater
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) says it is deeply concerned after another mineworker died at Sibanye Stillwater's Khuseleka operation in Rustenburg last week.
This is the 6th worker to die at Sibanye Stillwater since January this year.
Sibanye Stillwater's spokesperson James Wellsted says the worker, an assistant winch operator, might have fallen asleep.
"Our assistant winch operator fell into the galee, we are not sure of the circumstances that lead to that, but he fell into the galee where there was a scraper that was removing ore. We think it may have been that he potentially fell asleep and fell into the galee," says Wellsted.
Wellsted explains the other five workers died underground.
"Well we do try and avoid all injury and fatality as much as we can. Where there are incidents we investigate and look at what remedial action we could have taken. But a lot of these incidents are behaviourally related. Sometimes people don't observe the safety procedures that we do have in place," says Wellsted.
He says the Department of Mineral Resources is investigating the latest incident.
NUM'S Health and Safety Chairperson Peter Bailey says serious intervention needs to take place at all Sibanye Stillwater operations in South Africa or the situation will get worse.
Last week, 79 miners at the Kloof Operations in Johannesburg, whose shift ended at 16:00, found themselves underground until 21:00 due to an operational incident.
The shaft was declared safe and miners were brought to the surface.
Bailey says such incidents and deaths should not be normal.