23 May 2013

BCL Mine has celebrated achievement of four million shifts of production with no fatalities.

Subsequent to the celebrations, the mine was awarded a certificate of recognition for good mining practices by the National Occupational Safety Association (NOSA).

Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Mr Kitso Mokaila commended the mine on Tuesday, saying its good performance of surpassing the four million fatality free shifts mark demonstrated that the mine had good mining practices. He said this showed that BCL employees also adhered to the organisation's Safety Health and Environment (SHE) policy, mining legislation and enforcement of the legislation by the Department of Mines.

“This achievement is derived from BCL’s adherence to NOSA Integrated SHE Management System, Hazard Identification Risk Management mandate and internal safety campaigns to raise awareness on safety to the BCL workforce,” he said.

He noted that after 42 years of operations, the BCL was facing significant challenges as its shafts continued to be deeper, while utilising ageing processing plants and equipment. In addition, he said, a depleting resource and declining grades also posed a challenge.

“This result in significant increase in production costs and it is gratifying to note that you have not fallen into a trap of taking risky shortcuts and cutting corners by performing unsafe acts to conserve cost,” he said.

For his part, Mr Charles Siwawa from the Botswana Chamber of Mines said  there were structures in place that had been instituted to address safety issues on mines. He said one of the most successful programmes was that of behaviour based safety, also known as ‘Du Pont,’ that reviewed the behaviour of employees and focused the outputs in the desired direction. 

“BCL was one of the first mining companies in Botswana to embark on this programme some 10 years ago and it is therefore not a coincidence that today we are celebrating the achievement of four million fatality free shifts,” he said.

He said the chamber also focused its efforts on SHE, adding that there was a technical committee composed of all the SHE practitioners on the mines, that meet twice a year to deliberate on strategic issues. Mr Siwawa said the committee has three sub-committees of SHE that detail operational issues and report back to the committee and chamber for action.

“However, despite all these efforts, there still remain risks that pose danger to employees and machinery. Mines must maintain operational safety and produce statistics that are collated centrally, through the chamber of mines for comparison and recording keeping,” he said. He said the Botswana Chamber of Mines has seen a positive trend that BCL has maintained over the recent years and commends them for the achievement.

The BCL general manager, Mr Dan Mahupela acknowledged BCL employees for adhering to safety measures. He said the day celebrations were meant to pay respect to the mine employees and to applaud them for good production shits with no fatalities. Mr Mahupela further encouraged them to keep up the good work in taking BCL mine to another level.  Ends.