Lily Mine announce plans to resume operations
SIYAKHULA Sonke Empowerment Corporation (SSC), the new owners of the ill-fated Lily Mine in Mpumalanga, yesterday said it would soon resume operations after the process of recruiting new employees is started early this year.
SSC group chief executive Fred Arendse said the mine needed to be opened to preserve the community.
“There needs to be a dawn of a new Vantage Gold mine that will benefit the people for the better,” he said.
Arendse, who introduced the company’s team that will be working at the mine, said the recruitment of new employees could start as early as March 2019.
Yesterday’s announcement of the reopening of the mine coincided with the third anniversary of an accident at the mine in which three workers were killed after being trapped underground.
Pretty Nkambule, Solomon Nyirenda and Yvonne Mnisi were presumed dead after a lamp-room container they were working in fell into a sinkhole in February 2016.
Operations at the Barberton-based mine were halted and the mine was placed under business rescue with about 1000 workers losing their jobs.
Last year the mine said it had secured R190 million from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and R110m from other unnamed new investors to fund rescue operations for the three workers.
And in December, the Department of Mineral Resources approved the transfer of ownership of Lily and Barbrook mine from Australian owned Vantage Goldfields to SSC’s subsidiary, Flaming Silver Trading, in terms of Section 11 of the Mineral and Petroleum Development Act.
SSC then received R190 million from the IDC to restart the mine.
Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, has called on mining companies to work to benefit communities instead of simply extracting the minerals.
The department said
it was
supporting all efforts to resume operations at the mine in a bid to find the deceased workers.
“The department supports all efforts to ensure the new owners are able to resume operations and find the container, so their families and loved ones can have closure,” the department said in a statement.
ANA REPORTER