Health

Assmang – health and safety compromised?Mziwakhe Hlangani and Jenny Grice

Six workers were killed and four badly burnt when Furnace number 6 at Assmang in Cato Ridge exploded burning everything in its wake.

Mshiyeni Ngubane, one of the three survivors, recounted his harrowing experience of the furnace blast in his hospital bed in Pietermaritzburgâ€™s Netcare Hospital.

â€œItâ€™s a hellhole storm that broke out in the area of the furnace which was switched on by a colleague and myself,â€ the smelter ore assistant said.â€œ

We could have been saved because the firebomb shot towards the upper floors and we were all in the darkness on the ground floor.

The fumes got us dizzy and I was covered with fire in my hands and upper body as we crawled towards the first aid station,â€ he said.

Two other workers also miraculously survived the explosion.

A foreman who was also killed in the accident was reportedly instructed by a supervisor on standby at about 3 am on the day in question to switch the furnace on after it was put off by engineers in afternoon shift because of a water leakage, he said.

Two other workers miraculously survived the explosion.â€œWe do not know how and why the furnace was operated by the night shift staff operators, because (during the day shift) it was declared unsafe to put it into operation," said Numsa local organiser, Siphiwe Ntsele just after the blast.

It is the second blast in three months after one worker was killed in a similar explosion on December 14, 2007. It followed another blast in 2006.

Management meeting with workersAt a meeting with workers after the blast, Patrice Motsepe, one of the owners of the company, assured workers that they would investigate the deadly accident.

If something or someone had done wrong, the company would take action.

Motsepe told workers that it was high time that companies didnâ€™t do business at the expense of workers.

He said that safety must be the first priority for workers in this country.The KZN MEC for social development echoed his sentiments saying that he condemned what had happened in Cato Ridge.

He pointed out that it was not the first time that accidents of this nature had happened. He requested the company and the union to sit down to ensure that such accidents did not happen again.

The MEC further committed his department to help the dependants of the deceased financially while they are waiting for their payouts.

Numsa sends it condolences to families of the following workers that were killed in the accident – Zibuse Maduna, Alfred Mtolo, Mzomuhle Gcumisa, Vusi Kubheka, Nhlanhla Ngcobo, Bheki Ndlomvu.

Efforts to investigate deathsNumsa health and safety coordinator, Puleng Mminele, says that the union has engaged Industrial Health Resource Group (IHRG) from Cape Town University occupational health and safety unit.

They will do an independent investigation into the events that led to the explosion. "Last week the company refused us access to their electronic data," said Mminele.

This information is crucial because it "monitors processes and tells you whether there is a water or gas leakage that may cause an explosion.

"The company also initially denied Numsa permission to interview people within the company premises. However it finally agreed to Numsa's request but when the IHRG was supposed to start with this investigation, "we suspected that the company might have interfered with the computer system because the technician couldnâ€™t access the information," says Mminele.

By the time the access problem was rectified, it was too late for the IHRG to investigate. As Numsa News went to print, IHRG was continuing with the investigation.

Gruesome death at Atlantis Foundries

Workers at Atlantis Foundries had to be comforted after they witnessed the gruesome crushing to death of Numsa member Leonard Sampuhlu.Sampuhlu was a worker employed through a labour broker.

He had been working at the factory for just one year when he climbed into the engine block press machine to clean it.

The press brings the top engine mounting and presses down hard to join the bottom engine mounting. Somehow the machine was turned on when he was inside.

He was brutally squashed between the top and bottom of the machine and died instantly.An initial inspection by the IHRG found that some safety switches were not working at the time.

As Numsa News went to print the department of labour had rejected the company's version of events.Numsa extends its deepest condolences to the family of Sampuhlu – a person should not die like this at work.

No protection for hundreds exposed to chronic manganism disordersMziwakhe Hlangani and Jenny Grice

The outrageous state of affairs in South Africaâ€™s largest ferro-manganese smelter Assmang is legendary.

Cato Ridgeâ€™s all-important public enquiry at Assmang catalogues deliberate exposure of helpless employees to high levels of manganese dust, negligence, failure to provide roof ventilation in the furnaces and total disregard for medical monitoring systems and lack of genuinely protective respiratory masks to safeguard those affected victims of the disease.

The hearing got off to a shaky start in the sleepy town of Cato Ridge near Pietermaritzburg when workers from Samancor Meyerton disrupted the hearing.

Coming to pledge their solidarity with the affected workers, they carried a coffin into the hearing and told the spectators that "this is where our brothers and sisters end up!"They too want a public hearing so that their allegations of manganese poisoning can be heard.
While the disruption delayed the hearing for a short time, it allowed lawyers for the company to jump in and claim that the fact that the presiding officer had allowed the protesting workers into the hearing showed that he was not impartial.

They called for the presiding officer to recuse himself!The presiding officer refused and said that if the company was unhappy it could make an application to the chief inspector within 60 days.

The company finally agreed to continue with the hearing "under protest"."It was a self-serving and ill conceived attempt to frustrate the enquiry," says Mminele.

The enquiryEmbattled Assmang Chief Executive Officer Brian Broekman is unlikely to survive after suffering an embarrassing and discomforting grilling in the enquiry.

He conceded that though the company was aware of the urgent need to put in place sufficient roof ventilation in the furnaces to lessen prolonged inhalation of manganese fumes that occur during beneficiation process, they did not do that.

For Broekman it was a case of another day, another work-out as he appeared more determined than ever before during three days of cross-examination by Numsa's lawyer Richard Spoor.

He insisted that the company had complied with legislation and that the workforce was being tested through symptomatic diagnosis to identify those who will have to undergo further testing and examination by neurologists.

Devastated senior company officers and their legal representative appeared to be resigned to the fact that they will have to face the wrath of the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPA).

The enquiry commissioned by the Department of Labour is investigating the cause of the clinical symptoms of manganism often characterized by the neurological dysfunction of body movements among its employees, including mental disturbances, tremors and speech disorders, among others.

Manganism shows symptoms resembling Parkinson's disease, according to medical experts. Though more than 40 cases of suspected manganism have been detected at the workforce, the company has not yet rolled out its ambitious health and safety initiative to protect workers even though hundreds of millions of rands had been put aside for this purpose, Broekman also conceded.