Unmined Gold due to Safety Reasons
June 12th, 2008South Africa. GOLD FIELDS might leave a portion of its ounces un-mined due to Safety reasons.
“I think one of the most important things is re-assessing certain areas of our operations where possibly we should decide to pull out of or not go into at all and in particular I am looking at things like pillar and remnant mines,” CEO Nick Holland said.
“Those are areas where we have mined previously, now we are going back into those areas - typically old shafts where we have left pillars. If we think this is too high risk we will pull out of that,” said Holland.
There would be a loss of production if the company decided to follow this route.
The company commissioned an independent Safety audit of the company’s Safety practices after nine people died in an accident at Gold Field’s South Deep mine on the day Holland took over the job.
“I had to do something drastically, had to do something quickly and something radically and what I have done since taking over is that I have commissioned a full independent audit of all of our Safety practices and philosophies,” he said.
Holland has been speaking to some of the company’s 50,000 employees in South Africa.
“My message to them was simply that if we can’t mine safely we won’t mine and there is no price on a life,” he said.
Source: miningmx.com
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