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Home > Safety & Sustainable Development > Safety & Health

EMPLOYEE SAFETY

OVERVIEW

From an ethical and moral perspective it is simply unacceptable that our employees run the risk of being injured, or at worst killed, while at work. We have fully embraced the principle of zero harm to ensure that everyone who works at Anglo Platinum returns home to their families at the end of their shift, unhurt.

The consequences of employees being injured or dying at our operations are immeasurable. The trauma families and colleagues go through has an impact on their well-being, on their communities and on the work environment in general. Mining's generally poor safety record has had an impact on the industry's ability to attract young, highly skilled employees who would rather choose careers in other sectors that provide a safer work environment.

In addition, each time an operation experiences a serious injury or fatality, this has a direct bearing on production possibly owing to a statutory temporary mine closure, a temporary closure for internal investigations and/or reduced employee productivity due to grieving or distraction.

It is for all of these reasons that it is imperative that we improve our safety performance.

PERFORMANCE

Our safety performance remains unacceptable and during 2008, regrettably, 17 people were fatally injured compared with 25 in 2007 and 18 in 2006. In addition non-managed operations had three fatalaties, two at Marikana and one at Kroondal. Anglo Platinum extends its condolences to the families and other people affected by these events. We will continue to maintain the utmost focus and to partner with stakeholders to reach our goal of eliminating all injuries.

Of the people who lost their lives in 2008, seven were employees and 10 were contractors working in our operations. The causes of fatalities in 2008 were as follows: five falls of ground, three falls from a height, two transportations, two fires and explosions, two moving machinery incidents, one mudrush, one drowning and one electrocution.

The Group's recently appointed CEO, Neville Nicolau, personally reviewed each one of the last nine incidents to ensure that the bereaved had been attended to with the utmost care and respect by the Company, and to identify the root causes of the fatality so that corrective action can be taken across the Group to prevent a recurrence. For example, in-stope netting will become a Group standard to reduce the risk of fall of ground incidents. See picture on the front cover of the Business Report as a example of safety netting.

The lost-time injury-frequency rate (LTIFR) decreased to 1.74 in 2008, from 2.03 in 2007. These improvements remain encouraging, although the overall safety performance clearly remains unacceptable.

Union and Twickenham mines, Polokwane, Mortimer and Waterval smelters, Rustenburg Base Metal Refiners and Precious Metal Refiners were fatality-free during 2008. Union Mine and Mortimer Smelter's performances have been exemplary. The mine has operated for more than six and a half million shifts, more than two years, without a fatality, while the smelter has operated for 44 months without a lost-time injury. Lessons from these operations are being shared to ensure a Group-wide improvement in safety performance.

While the safety incident rates and statistics are showing an improving trend, there remains significant scope for improvement in order to achieve the ultimate goal of zero harm. The implementation of the enhanced safety improvement plans developed in 2007 has identified a number of further focus areas, including incident investigation and risk management, and these are being integrated into the overall safety management system. For a complete set of safety performance data refer to the 'Performance Data and Information'.

STRATEGY

The AAplc safety strategy, known as the 'One Safe Anglo' strategy, was approved in 2008 and it is the Company's intention to adopt this strategy. Anglo Platinum is currently completing a gap analysis between its strategy and safety management systems and those of the One Safe Anglo strategy to determine what, if anything, needs to change in the Group's approach to safety. This gap analysis will be completed during the first quarter of 2009 and may lead to a change in the Group's overall safety strategy.

POLICY

The Anglo Platinum safety, health and environmental policy was amended in 2008 with the overriding aim being to achieve zero harm through the effective management of safety. Zero harm means a work environment where no one gets hurt. It is underpinned by the three principles of 'zero mindset'; 'no repeats'; and 'simple, non-negotiable standards'.

MANAGEMENT

OHSAS 18001 is used as the foundation on which the operational safety management systems are maintained and all our operations retained OHSAS 18001 certification in 2008. All operations have safety and health committes that meet monthly with unions to discuss and solve safety and health related issues. During the implementation phase of the enhanced safety improvement plans developed in 2007 we identified a number of further focus areas, such as incident investigation and risk management.

Safety-risk management

Anglo Platinum has adopted the Anglo American safety-risk management programme that aims to ensure consistent and robust practices on risk assessment, evaluation and management. Clearly it is crucial that line managers have a good understanding of how to manage risk. In 2008, and in partnership with local universities, Anglo Platinum trained all its executives and 96 of its line managers in this programme. Further courses are being developed to cater for the supervisory levels of the organisation, and also an awareness programme targeted at general employees. Furthermore, 10 safety practitioners have attended an intense 'risk champion' programme aimed at improving the operational safety-risk management processes at our operations.

Fatal risk standards

At the end of 2007, Anglo Platinum adopted a set of fatal risk standards, relating to the 10 foremost agencies causing fatalities. The standards guide managers in how to implement consistent and sustainable risk-control measures, and each standard is based on the three key requirements of systems, equipment and people. The standards have been based on the experiences of our peer companies, and have a record of having a positive impact in the industry. Anglo Platinum's operations have achieved an average of 56% implementation against the target of full implementation by October 2010. The 10 fatal-risk standards relate to light vehicles; surface mobile equipment; hazardous material management; molten materials management; equipment safeguarding; isolation; working at heights; lifting operations; underground ground control and underground equipment.

Values

During 2008, Anglo Platinum embarked on a new, values-based safety drive. The values and culture project, as it is called, forms part of the Company's general enhanced safety improvement plan (ESIP) project, which has its roots in the recognition that a range of initiatives is required to grow and nurture an impeccable, company-wide attitude towards safety. The key objective of the values and culture project is to transform Anglo Platinum into a safer, more caring and performance-driven company, and to develop the effective leadership and communication required to meet this objective.

The project started with a diagnostic phase, during which employees across the organisation and at all levels were asked to comment on the current organisational culture. This was done using surveys, focus groups and interviews. According to the findings, the aspects of Company culture employees most wanted to see change were lack of fairness, lack of consistency and lack of respect. What they felt was sound and should remain the same were the focus on safety, the emphasis on values and the results-driven nature of the organisation. Based on this input, a draft set of values was formulated by the Executive Committee (Exco). A cross-section of employees was then asked for its response to the draft values, after which the final set of values and associated behaviours were adopted by the Exco.

The values, which were presented to senior management in early July 2008, are to:

• put safety first;
• deliver on our promises;
• value and care about each other;
• act with honesty and integrity;
• form one team; and
• be passionate and take pride in everything we do.

Operational management has subsequently rolled out the values at every operation within the Company. An ongoing organisational change-management programme is currently running, the aim of which is to align the organisation with the new values. A project team is busy infusing the core components of the values project into those aspects of the business where they fit most logically, ie human resources and corporate communications.

A survey, to be held in the second quarter of 2009, will determine whether there has been progress in addressing the values issues at the different sites. It will also evaluate the extent to which values integration and values alignment have been achieved throughout the Company.

Engineering solutions

Anglo Platinum is in the process of re-designing a number of critical pieces of mining equipment in order to design out, and thereby eliminate, certain injury hazards. Some of these re-designs involve:

• Air loaders. Air loaders are used to load ore and waste rock underground, and have resulted in injuries in the past as they are prone to roll.The company's new standard is to install two telescopic arms fitted to the operator's side of the loaders. Through leveraging of the side walls, these arms prevent the loader from rolling.
• Locomotives. Locomotives are used underground to transport ore and waste rock. There have been a number of incidents in which locomotives have collided with one another owing to poor underground visibility. As a result, all locomotives are currently being fitted with dual white/red LED lights that automatically shine white in the direction of travel, red at the rear and flashing red when standing. Proximity devices that warn the driver of other locomotives in the vicinity have been installed on the company's 846 locomotives. Furthermore, canopies have been added to locomotives to protect drivers. In some instances, this has required a complete re-design of the locomotive's battery compartment.
• Guard cars. The Company is busy installing new-generation guard cars at the rear of every train. The guard cars have been designed with safety roll bars and interlocking doors, which prevent the guards from jumping out of the guard car in the event of an impending collision.
  
• Winches. Winches are used with a scraper bucket system underground to scrape ore and waste rock to loading facilities. Winch-and-scraper incidents have occurred because the winch operator cannot see what is happening in the full length of the gulley. Among other things, state-of-the-art winch signalling devices are being fitted to all centre gulley winches. These devices enable any person along the length of the gulley to stop the winch themselves, by pulling the pull-wire on either side of the scraper gulley.
  
• Rock passes. Rock and ore passes are used to convey ore and waste rock in the mine. Mudrush fatalities have occurred in the past, when water has entered the rock passes. The Company has taken a decision that no water will be allowed to enter a rock or ore pass. Wherever physically possible, water-conveying pipes over rock passes have been re-routed away from the passes. Where this was not possible, high-pressure seamless pipes have been installed.
  
• Conveyor-belt fire safety. Every underground conveyor belt is being fitted with automatic fire detection and suppression systems. Each pulley-bearing will have heat detection probes and these will trip the belt in the event of elevated temperature.
  
• Trackless vehicles. All load-haul dumps and dump trucks are being fitted with vehicle- and/or people-detection systems, depending on the mining methods and mine layouts involved. The vehicle detection systems have a buzzer fitted in the cap-lamp cable of employees, which warns them of a vehicle in their vicinity. The people-detection systems warn the drivers of vehicles that there are people in their vicinity.
  
• Haul trucks. All haul trucks at Mogalakwena Mine have been fitted with cameras, radars and driver-fatigue monitors. The trucks also have bull bars in front, to prevent them from riding over other vehicles in the open pits.