Business rescue struggles to help ex-Gupta mine
Unpaid wages, contractor disputes plague colliery
Troubled former Guptaowned coal mine Optimum Colliery in Hendrina, Mpumalanga, is still on its knees four months after being put under business rescue.
The mine, one of two in the area formerly owned by the family, has struggled to improve despite being run by business rescue practitioners since the end of February.
Last week employees went on protest following two months of nonpayment by the main subcontractor in charge of the bulk of the mining operations on behalf of the mine.
Employees gathered outside the company’s offices, barricading entrances with burning tyres while demanding answers from business rescue practitioners.
Abram Mhlanga, an underground employee at the mine, said they had not been getting their monthly salaries regularly.
“It seems the company doesn’t have the money to pay salaries, our May salaries have not been paid,” Mhlanga said.
“This has affected our lives as we are expected to pay rent where we live... we can’t allow the situation to go on like this every month.”
One of the business rescue practitioners, Louis Klopper, said it would take a while to turn around the colliery, which he said they had found it in a disastrous state, with millions of profits having been “siphoned out of the company” every month.
He said although operations had improved, with exports taking place, restoring the mine was still a mammoth task.
“Millions were being siphoned out at the end of each month, so it’s going to take a long time to restore it to 100% efficiency,” Klopper said.
He added that they currently had a dispute with one of the companies subcontracted to run mining activities at the mine.
“We’ve had a dispute with one of the main subcontractors for the last three months. They’re insisting in a clause in their agreement that they get paid a certain minimum for production delivered irrespective of that production being delivered or not,” Klopper said.
He said under business rescue they were not allowed to prioritise one creditor over the other but said they were prepared to settle all costs incurred by their service providers in full.
Klopper said they had reached an agreement with one of their main contractors last week in which they made payments that would help settle the employees’ May salaries.
The Optimum colliery was bought by Tegeta Exploration and Resources from Glencore in 2016, a transaction described as irregular by former public protector Thuli Madonsela.