By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Minister of Minerals and Energy Gwede Mantashe officially opened and handed over the Freedom Park Clinic to the Department of Health in the North West Province.
The occasion was made possible by the implementation of the Social & Labour Plan (SLP) by Impala Rustenburg, North West.
Social and Labour Plans are a requirement of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act which obligate mines to enhance the lives of mining and labour sending communities.
“Our approach to the social and labour plans is that it’s well and good to deliver a community hall there and another small thing there. It makes a huge difference when mining companies pull resources together and deliver impactful projects to society. Projects that impact society in a big way, said Mantashe.
“Social and labour plans are important. It is the social license that mining companies build. You build a clinic, you hand over an early childhood development centre, you deliver a sports ground [or] you deliver upgrading of a school…when you do that, you are not doing communities any favour, you are paying a license to co-exist with them…in the community where you mine,” he said.
The Minister acknowledged that although more can be done, the industry has “gone a long way” to addressing transformation in the industry.
“The fact that we are now having [black] professionals in the industry is a function of changing the nature of the sector. We also opened mining to women.Women were not allowed to work in the mines by law. Today, 72 000 mineworkers are female.
“So we are continuing today here, to change the sector. Instead of just taking [the minerals] and going to sell them, you are now doing what you should have started doing many years ago of investing in communities. Beyond mining there should be life,” he said
Meanwhile Sibanye-Stillwater shareholders holding almost half of the company’s shares have demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the generous pay packages dished out to the mining company’s executives, including a R190 million payday for its CEO, Neal Froneman.
At the company’s AGM on Friday, shareholders holding 47.92% of company stock voted down Sibanye’s remuneration implementation report while 52.71% voted in favour of it.
When shareholders holding more than 25% of shares vote against such a non-binding advisory vote, companies are required by the JSE listing requirements – in line with the King Code on corporate governance – to engage with shareholders over their concerns.
This was the case last year too when just over 26% of shareholders voted against executive pay packages, which included Froneman’s jaw-dropping R300 million remuneration package.
Sibanye’s head of investor relations and corporate affairs, James Wellsted, said the remuneration questions posed by shareholders at Friday’s AGM sought to understand how the remuneration works.
“But there were one or two questions about – in the instance where we’ve had fatalities or safety incidences – how do we still justify paying incentives?” he said.
The company recorded five fatalities in 2022, compared with 21 in 2021. Lost time due to injuries declined from 951 to 668.