Equipment manufacturers and suppliers have a duty of care to ensure the occupational safety and health of miners, said May Hermanus, chief inspector of mines at the Department of Minerals and Energy.

She was speaking at the Nosa International risk management conference, Noshcon at Sun City.

“A culture of noncompliance is still prevalent in many sectors of the industry, indicating a behavioural problem,” she said.

Inspectors from the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) had noted that the design of some equipment and job functions required postures and actions that were not ergonomically correct, or hazardous, or exposed workers to noise in excess of regulated levels or periods.

“Some manufacturers respond that they make equipment to client specification, while some operators respond that they trust the manufacturers to adhere to the relevant legislated standards. We will inspect both parties and the occupational results in this regard,” Hermanus said.

Noise-induced hearing loss was becoming less common, she said, but many operators still could not meet the current legislative requirements due to the cumulative effects of noisy equipment design, confined areas in systems design, and a reliance on impact-based processes.

Inherited mining practices were often defective, Hermanus said.

“Operators should increase their capacity in risk identification, and their capacity to act on the results.”

Compensation levels remained too high, at R7,7-million for 2003, indicating that the improvement in safety, health and environment performance in mining in the last decades still left room for improvement.

Maximum fines were issued to a number of noncompliant mining companies for the first time recently, initiating several legal challenges.

While some maximum fines are set at around R200 000, the stoppages involved during rectification are usually much more costly.

Hermanus also identified the unchanged rate of silicosis as a current problem in the mining industry.

“Data from 1975 to 2001 indicates that we are not making progress against this disease. In addition, dust exposure drives a four-fold increase in tuberculoses (TB), while TB accelerates HIV infection and AIDS symptoms, which in turn accelerates the symptoms of TB. We have to break the vicious cycle that sustains a huge public health impact.”

The ultimate goal of legal compliance, she said, was sustainable development. Occupational safety, health and environmental (SH&E) management was central to sustainability.

“Government is intent on integrating occupational considerations with economic, social and political needs and rights.”

However, there is some good news. Many mines, among these being the deepest in the country, were now accustomed to operating for longer periods without either lost time incidents or fatalities.

“There is more evidence of a systematic approach to SH&E, and that is very heartening. The gold mining sector, in particular, had decreased its fatal injuries over last year.

“Our statistics show that we are still moving in the right direction. From our close tracking of monthly figures, it seemed that there is an improvement over last year’s figures in injury rates. We hope to see this confirmed soon,” Hermanus said.