To
Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and Energy
From
Kgosietsile Gaonnwe
Subject
Mine Safety Perfomance Information Reporting Anomalies
Date
20 November 2021 5:15 a.m.
Dear Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and Energy,

I am a mining professional who is concerned about the manner in which the state of safety in South African Mines is being reported since the 2013/14 Financial Year, whereby the Executive Summary suggested that a stagnation in the rate at which mine workers were fatally injured was referred to as an improvement. I compiled a report and shared my views about that to members of the portfolio committee sometime in 2019 and received no feedback about my concerns apart from the indirect feedback of my communication to all DMR and their related SOE's being ignored, which gives an impression that there is a culture of not providing feedback to ordinary citizens.

I am further concerned that the Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate Annual Report 2020-21 is now silent about accident frequency rates and further more, the Department of Mineral Resources Energy website is no longer providing updates on the latest reports about the state of safety and health in the mining industry.

I have conducted an independent comparative study on safety performance reporting by various sector stakeholders and it distinctly clear that both the MHSI and MHSC does not mention anything about the UNDP's Agenda 2030 when compared to annual reports by a Mining Company and the Minerals Council. I see this anomaly as violation of the rights of mine workers to quality jobs in that it is impossible to develop appropriate strategies to address the problems without a proper analysis of the performance information.

The month of October 2021 had an alarmingly high number of fatalities and it is worrisome that the DMRE and MHSC have chosen not to issue any statement regarding that anomaly whilst the Minerals Council had the decency to express an opinion about what is happening on their website.

I will also like to place on record that I have reason to believe that I am being denied the right to access employment opportunities in the sector because of me exercising my right and duty as a citizen to express my views about performance in the sector.

The people in question are my former colleagues whose direct contact information I have and it is embarrassing to me to have to resort to communicating with them via other agencies because I have noticed that they do not respond to me directly and seem to be comfortable to direct information I request from them to other agencies of government.

I humbly request for the committee to have a look into the reasons behind the changes to reporting standards and why stakeholders should not regard the changes as a violation of Section 1(c) of the MHSA, 1996; Public Finance Management Act and Promotion of Access to Information Act.