Modern Mining October 2016

SAFETY IN MINING

industry through an adoption process which involves identifying, documenting, demon- strating and facilitating widespread adoption of leading practices that have the greatest poten- tial to address the major risks in health and safety areas such as falls of ground, transport and machinery, dust and noise. Dr Phakathi also mentioned the valu- able work being done by the Chamber’s CEO Zero Harm Task Team, established in 2012 to acknowledge the value of leading by example. He said the team’s focus had moved from fall of ground and transportation to include criti- cal control management of OHS, behavioural change in line with the industry’s culture transformation framework (CTF) and achieve- ment of the 2024 milestones – agreed to by all stakeholders in 2014 – on occupational health and safety. These milestones include the elimina- tion of fatalities in mining (to be achieved by December 2020), a 20 % reduction in Lost Time Injuries (LTIs) per year from January 2017, as well as the elimination of occupational lung diseases and noise-induced hearing loss by the end of 2024. 

in 2015 – a phenomenal 93 % improvement. He said the improvement in mine safety represented “a good journey of collabora- tion” between tripartite stakeholders from government, organised business and labour. Contributors to the improved performance included the adoption of research and devel- opment outcomes from the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) which, he noted, had spent over R250 million in research to deal with seismicity associated with deep-level mining. Dr Phakathi also cited the adoption of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) lead- ing practices, saying that the Chamber’s MOSH (mining industry occupational safety and health) Learning Hub had greatly facili- tated this process. Examples of such practices were mining with nets and bolts to deal with fall of ground, Proximity Detection System (PDS) technology to deal with transportation and mobile machinery and the Trigger Action Response Plan (TARP) to deal with entry exam- ination and making safe. The Chamber established the Learning Hub in 2009 to encourage mining companies to learn from the pockets of excellence that exist in the

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