COSATU has applied for a Section 77 Notice on Non compliance with Health and safety at Nedlac

16 October 2018  

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has successfully applied for section 77 strike at Nedlac in order to put pressure on employers to take health and safety policies seriously. Over the last decade, we have seen a serious deterioration in the health and safety compliance by both government and the private sector.

In October 2007, three thousand two hundred workers were trapped underground for 42 hours. Had this workers not been brought to safety, this event could have been the worst disaster in the history of mining, not only for South Africa but the rest of the world. This incident prompted the Head of State, President Thabo Mbeki and the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Ms BP Sonjica to call for a country wide health and safety audit of mines to determine the levels of compliance to legal requirements as set out in the Act (Mine Health and Safety Act of 1996) of parliament.

The 2008 Presidential Mine Health and Safety Audit report found that there was poor compliance on occupational health risk management, occupational health and safety policy and codes of practice.

Since then things deteriorated further as we saw in 2015 where three people died following the Grayston Drive bridge collapse and the following years in 2016 a mine accident killed three workers at Lily mine and their bodies are yet to be recovered to this day. 

Over the last two years, we have seen mineworkers die like flies at a number of Sibanye Stillwater operations all across the country. At the same time we saw close to 1000 workers trapped underground as a result of power failure at Beatrix Mine in Welkom.Sibanye Stillwater has violated the health and safety laws by exposing its workers to injuries and death in situations where these could have been avoided.

Despite various investigations into health and safety in the mining sector and other sectors compliance with health and safety has been largely ignored by business. This has happened in non mining workplaces as well. In September 2018 three firefighters lost their lives in a fire at the Bank of Lisbon building in Johannesburg.

Cosatu has applied for section 77 strike to put pressure on employers to take helath and safety policies serious. In our notice we demand the following;

- We demand a single legislative authority, a single Occupational Health and Safety act, and a single compensation authority.  This means the implementation of a cabinet memo of 1999, on the integration of the OHS inspectorate and compensation.

- Review the Occupational Health and Safety act for the election of a full-time health and safety representative.

- We demand a legislative review on penalties for non compliance with health and safety policies and laws.

- Shop stewards must be trained at the level of an inspector to be able to participate in the compliance, monitoring and evaluation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

- Workers must be entitled to a full salary during the mining closure as directed by section 54 and 55 of the mine health and safety act process.

- We demand commission of Inquiry into the status of Occupational Health and Safety in the country to investigate the compliance on the Mine Health and Safety Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act and Occupational Diseases in the Mines Act.

- The commission should among others investigate causes and solutions to rock burst and rock fall incidents, including seismic events. 

- We demand the review of mining seismology and rock engineering principles for all the mines, and with focus on the gold mining.  We further demand that the mining companies must strengthen their monitoring system and technology.

We condemn the reckless chamber of mines, BUSA and BLSA for their intransigence on this very important subject. COSATU is awaiting Nedlac’s letter indicating permission to engage in a protected strike action on health and issues we hope that through protest actions we would be able to put pressure on government and monopoly capital to take health and safety policies serious because workers sell only their labour and not their lives.  

Issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, COSATU, 16 October 2018