Deputy Speaker, I move without notice:
That the House - 1) notes that at least 468 miners were trapped underground at Kusasalethu gold mine, near Carletonville on Sunday, and at least 18 were still trapped in the early hours of Monday morning;
2) further notes that the total mining fatality amounted to 168 workers, and a safety audit showed mine safety compliance in South Africa was below target at just 66%;
3) acknowledges that the company in question, Harmony Gold, which is the world's fifth largest gold mine has had three fatalities at Kusasalethu mine in 2014,and two and four people died in 2013 and 2012, respectively;
4) further acknowledges that Harmony Gold stopped operations several times, including last year, when employees were trapped underground and eight of them died underground;
5) recognises that although Harmony Gold employed 19 758 people and paid a total of R3,4 billion in salaries, many of the workers are on temporary wage employment;
6) further recognises that Adcorp, South Africa's biggest labour broker by market share, reported the labour broking industry to have an annual turnover of around R44 billion - money that should be in the hands of workers;
7) believes that this robs miners of their hard-earned money and places it into the hands of private companies that take advantage of the structural unemployment in this country;
8) further believes that clause 2,9 of the Mining Charter gives the Department of Mineral Resources the ability to take into account, in its monitoring and evaluation function, the effect of material constraints that may result in a company not achieving its compliance targets; and
9) calls upon the Minister to investigate Harmony Gold for possible violation of the Mining Charter and safety regulations by putting the lives of mine workers at risk.
Agreed to.