Employee health and safety contributes significantly towards sustainability in the mining industry. It is for this reason that Exxaro Resources hosts the Sustainability Summit annually to communicate and discuss health and safety issues with employees.
By Dineo Phoshoko
South Africa is currently experiencing the second wave of the Coronavirus. As such now more than ever, the country needs to work collectively to effectively manage the spread of the virus. For the mining industry, companies need to ensure that Covid-19 regulations are followed to protect employee health and safety. The Summit started in 2009 and has been hosted by various sites including Grootegeluk, The Connexion Head Office, Matla Mine and Leeuwpan Mine to name a few. Speaking to Mining News, Dr Joseph Matjila, group manager for health and safety at Exxaro explains that the Sustainability Summit is an event that the company prioritises annually on the corporate calendar.Purpose of the Summit
According to Matjila, the Summit was inspired by a business need when the company experienced safety challenges which saw them experiencing between three and four fatalities yearly in 2008 and 2009. “At that point the CEO and the executive committee believed that there was a need to relook at our approach on safety,” Matjila says. The first summit was held at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria (Tshwane) and was a multi-stakeholder formation which included union representatives and the, where the organisation together with its stakeholders came together to discuss what needed to be done to change the unimpressive safety performance at the time. “The summit in its nature is a forum where the employer, the employee, authorities and any other stakeholder that has got an interest in our safety, comes around the table to focus on safety.” At that first Summit, stakeholders collectively agreed on holding the bad safety performance to account, and that everyone was equally responsible for driving the safety performance of the organisation in a particular direction. The safety improvement plan was compiled and signed off by all stakeholders. The plan identified five key pillars as follows:- Incredible leadership in driving safety
- Safety Communication
- Safety Training
- Risk management
- Zero tolerance
2021 Sustainability Summit
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Matjila has not received sign off for the 2021 Summit. However, he maintains that the pandemic will not prohibit the company from achieving objectives outlined in the communication pillar. The objectives include acknowledging and celebrating no fatalities at Exxaro’s operations, communicating messages of health and safety throughout the company and further recommitment for improvement. Matjila highlights that it is highly unlikely that the objective of safety communication will be achieved through the Sustainability Summit alone. There are other critical interventions that are part of the communication pillar which can be used to achieve objectives set out in this pillar. The Safety Indaba is one of them. Unlike the Summit, the Indaba is hosted by operations where the mine leadership and other stakeholders identify stumbling blocks that could potentially prevent the company from achieving zero harm. The Safety Leadership Day is another intervention where all executive members take time off to go and engage with the workforce around safety measures. There is also the safety leadership message where each year a different executive committee member share messages about the company’s safety performance which is shared with all employees. All three interventions are part of the communication pillar in the safety improvement plan. They will most likely go ahead in 2021.Dealing with Covid-19
“Incidentally, our measures of dealing with the pandemic were actually informed by our health and wellness strategy,” says Matjila. The group’s health and wellness strategy is based on three pillars, the first being diagnosis. “You can only manage what you are able to understand. Diagnosis is critical for our strategy.” The second pillar is management. “When you do have a condition, you need to manage the condition be it HIV/AIDS, TB or hypertension.” The final pillar is the perusal of a preventative strategy. “We’d rather spend more effort in preventing you from being infected or having a health condition.” Matjila explains that the company adopted a preventative health system. “We’re actually moving our health system from a curative employer driven solution, to an employee preventative health solution. Covid-19 has been a perfect example of how that can be done,” Matjila says. Using Covid-19 as an example, Matjila says there is currently no cure for the virus however there are measures to manage the virus if contracted.