Miners in health fund talks
• Firms aim to recompense workers made ill by inhaling silica dust
Six large South African mining companies could reach a settlement soon with thousands of workers made ill by working underground in gold mines in past decades, avoiding a lengthy court battle over compensation, said Graham Briggs, chairman of the occupational lung disease working group.
The group, which comprises Anglo American SA, AngloGold Ashanti, African Rainbow Minerals, Gold Fields, Harmony and Sibanye Gold, is working hard with lawyers representing claimants in the class action lawsuit, unions and the departments of mineral resources, health and labour to find an outof-court settlement.
The collaboration of the three departments, the six companies, unions and lawyers to find a settlement gave rise to optimism that a settlement could be reached this year, said Briggs, the former Harmony CE. “We don’t have a solution on the table yet, but I’m optimistic we are going to get there this year.”
The mining firms will set up a legacy fund to compensate workers made ill by inhaling silica dust during the mining of gold from quartz veins. The dust scars lungs and debilitates those who have silicosis.
The size of the legacy fund is unknown at this stage, Briggs said on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba, with work under way to determine how many former miners were afflicted with silicosis and how many families were eligible to claim from the fund because of the deaths stemming from silicosis. The legacy fund would match what they were paid from a Department of Health fund for silicosis sufferers.
“Putting a number out there and scaring every investor away because it’s such a big number would be crazy because we don’t know what the number will be. We haven’t got a settlement on the quantum yet or the number of people who will ask for claims,” Briggs said.
The number of people who contracted silicosis was difficult to determine, with estimates ranging from as high as 280,000 people to 100,000 — an estimate from the claimants lawyers – to below 100,000 as estimated by the Chamber of Mines. There was a R3.7bn fund within the department raised from an R8 per miner per underground shift levy charged on gold miners that also had to be disbursed to those suffering from silicosis, with payments of either R50,000 and R100,000 per ill person, depending on the severity of the silicosis.
“That money is sufficient to cover all those who have silicosis. We need to up our game in finding those people who have money due to them,” Briggs said. “We need to make the system a lot more sophisticated.”
The mining companies had to improve their “archaic” tracking and tracing systems to find beneficiaries, Briggs said.
The problem in tracking former miners was the lack of identity numbers, different employee numbers and the lack of addresses or details of next of kin, he said.