Occupational safety and health

Tau Lekoa Mine, which employs some 4,000 people including contractors, is situated within the Vaal River area of AngloGold Ashanti's South Africa region.

In recent years, Tau Lekoa ('the lion of the river' in seSotho) has struggled with above-average injury rates. In a significant turnaround, the mine has achieved improvements of 40% and 22% respectively in its lost time and serious injury frequency rates for 2004, compared with 2003.

"Previous strategies essentially focused on reacting after the event: we have now combined this with a proactive system through which leading, rather than lagging indicators of risk are identified and managed before incidents occur," says general manager Mitch Hill. "In addition to this, we have statistically proved the correlation between the assessed risk status of workplaces (a leading indicator) and injury rates (lagging indicators)."

The point of departure was the development of a Tau Lekoa-specific occupational health and safety policy, within the framework of the AngloGold Ashanti policy. In terms of this, significant risks were identified, with the overall objective of continually reducing these to a level as low as reasonably practicable. These risks are then managed within the OHSAS 18001 specification, based on British standard BS 8800.

The full acceptance for the management of safety by line management has been one of the major reasons for success at Tau Lekoa over the past year. "Ownership of the new pro-active strategy of risk management is now a way of life at the mine," says Hill. "This is evident in the overall understanding and application of the principles of risk management, which has been successfully filtered down to team leader/crew supervisor level. This has been achieved through ongoing coaching sessions on the principles of risk management and the development of mechanisms to allow for a simple, yet technically sound approach."

Increased labour unavailability, with the associated fatigue and risk effect, was identified as another leading indicator. "We established a system whereby people regularly absent from work, and the causes for this absenteeism, were identified and managed accordingly," explains senior human resources manager Daan Adlem. "The mine has now developed a work attendance policy, with the full support of all unions and associations."

The mine's four-phase approach to behaviour-based safety was developed to address the effects of 'at-risk' behaviour and formed the core of the on-mine safety launch, which dovetailed with the South Africa region's safety re-launch in April 2004. The 'red/green glove' initiative, which focuses on the observation of critical behaviours, is a key component of the system. "This was based on the SMAT (Safety Management Auditing Technique) but was tailored to Tau Lekoa's circumstances and culture," says safety and risk manager George Coetzee. "When people see a red glove held up underground they stop work immediately and a formal interaction process starts."

Every Friday afternoon, Mitch Hill personally reviews selected working places with high risk ratings and all lost time injuries that have taken place during the preceding week, with the miner being required to make a presentation to the mine Exco and any other work teams who have been involved in accidents.

"This is quite a gruelling process, but the focus is only 20% on determining causes, and 80% on coaching, counselling, and identifying future prevention strategies. Teams are equipped with the necessary knowledge and training to present a competent analysis," says Hill.

The output of each session - which can take up to two hours - is fed into a database and is utilised for future strategies.