A death-free year was achieved by the 23 000-employee De Bedistance from stone crusher to residence place
ers South African operations and its contracted workers in 1998 – and this is the way health and safety manager Flip Fourie wants to keep all the local mines and geological sites owned by the world’s biggest diamond company.
Fourie says that a death at The Oaks in 1999 was highly lamentable, but that the new zero-tolerance safety philosophy is set to keep occupational injury and death at all-time lows.
Legislation-exceeding safety, health and environmental initiatives have been introduced at every operation, resulting in accident rates dropping from 0,57% to 0,39% in 1999.
Although 59 cases of occupational diseases, including lung disease and hearing loss, were recorded last year, this is well below the occupational disease frequency rate of 1% required for five-star rating.
An occupational disease frequency rate of 0,2% was maintained, with lung disease being one of the biggest contributors to occupational disease at the company’s operations, especially at the older mines, and noise-induced sickness being second.
Once all De Beers’ local operations have obtained five-star safety ratings in the fields of mining and geology, the diamond-mining giant intends focussing on bringing safety, health and environmental levels at its other African operations on par with those in South Africa. Except for Marsfontein and The Oaks, all local operations have obtained five-star safety ratings for mining activities and a four-star rating for the Kimberley geology site.
Fourie reveals that, before implementing the safety programme at its African operations, the company must carry out full-scale audits.
Environmental engineer Peter Huma focuses on ensuring that dust is limited to statutory levels of no more than 5 mg/m2 and makes every effort to prevent dust from becoming airborne at all South African operations. Although Huma finds it feasible to maintain the stipulated dust levels at new operations, as the older ones pose enormous challenges, he says.
“We assess the risks, implement control measures and then monitor continuously,” he reports.