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22
MODERN QUARRYING
October - November 2015
FACE TO FACE WITH
ASPASA
that we don’t want to be regulated,” he
stresses.“We don’t need these regulations
to be counter-productive. The problem
now is that we have our feet in both the
mining and construction industries and
believe the time has come for us to define
our own sector’s regulations.
“Mining legislation calls for many
things but there is a grey area as far as
quarrying is concerned in terms of SLPs,
community interaction, education, etc,
and these are challenges that our smaller
operations sit with. They can’t afford to
build schools at every point for example.
There is a need for an industry differenti-
ation. Quarrying is in mining, but it is also
in construction,” he reiterates.
“Infrastructure is crucial for a coun-
try that is growing and if you don’t have
infrastructure and the construction mate-
rial suppliers which include quarries, brick
makers and cement operations, lime, etc;
if you don’t have a very strong industry on
that side, infrastructure development can
fall flat.
“The Mining Charter checks two
salient points – safety and health, and the
environment, and our operations have to
comply with both of these mainstream
legislation components. There needs to
be some form of consistent regulation on
material for roads, for example. You can’t
just dig the material out because there
are environmental issues. This is some-
thing that needs to be highlighted – the
difference between a mine and a quarry.
“Aspasa has achieved significant
advances in safety, health and the envi-
ronment, and this it will continue to
advocate. We are ahead of the pack in this
regard but there are many other import-
ant issues that we are dealing with.”
Regional meetings
MQ recently attended the Aspasa/
SARMA/IQSA regional meeting in the
Western Cape where several very inter-
esting presentations were made. Adrian
Damant presented the AKR integrated
software system for audits, while Bryan
Keague discussed Nosa’s contractor ver-
ification system. Santie Gouws’ paper
on the Gouda Wind farm attracted a lot
of interest together with solutions from
Barnstone and Crushforce.
It was a pleasure seeing Crowbar
Solutions’Don Schoeman again, who pre-
sented some significant insights into the
readymix industry of today.
These regional meetings have grown
Photographed at the lookout point
at Peninsula, Nico Pienaar (red
hard hat) chats to attendees of the
Western Cape regional meeting.