Thousands of workers on South African mines may face retrenchment as mining houses serve notice to lay them off in the face of falling commodity prices and rising operational costs, according to an update by the local news agency sabcnews.
The updates stated that South Africa's Trade union Solidarity says Dominion uranium mine outside Klerksdorp in the North West Province has served it with a notice to retrench 1 013 out of the 1 175 employees under the union. Solidarity says Dominion will retain a skeleton staff of 162 workers to maintain the mine's facilities in case it needs to resume operations in the future.
The mine expects to complete the retrenchment exercise by the first week of January next year.
Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans is reported to have said that the main drivers of the decision to halt operations and retrench workers at Dominion and at many other South Africans mines were the free falling commodity prices on world markets driven by a severely depressed global demand.
Solidarity has also said that up to 16 000 workers at Lonmin, the world's third largest producer of platinum faced retrenchments before the end of this year, as the company suffered production losses due to safety stoppages, Eskom power outages and high levels of absenteeism.
While Lonmin declined to comment on the pending retrenchments, it has revised its initial production forecast for the year from an initial 900 000 ounces to less than 725 000 ounces.
The updates stated that South Africa's Trade union Solidarity says Dominion uranium mine outside Klerksdorp in the North West Province has served it with a notice to retrench 1 013 out of the 1 175 employees under the union. Solidarity says Dominion will retain a skeleton staff of 162 workers to maintain the mine's facilities in case it needs to resume operations in the future.
The mine expects to complete the retrenchment exercise by the first week of January next year.
Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans is reported to have said that the main drivers of the decision to halt operations and retrench workers at Dominion and at many other South Africans mines were the free falling commodity prices on world markets driven by a severely depressed global demand.
Solidarity has also said that up to 16 000 workers at Lonmin, the world's third largest producer of platinum faced retrenchments before the end of this year, as the company suffered production losses due to safety stoppages, Eskom power outages and high levels of absenteeism.
While Lonmin declined to comment on the pending retrenchments, it has revised its initial production forecast for the year from an initial 900 000 ounces to less than 725 000 ounces.
No comments:
Post a Comment