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October 2016
MODERN MINING
39
SAFETY IN MINING
feature
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
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.