The Minister of Minerals and Petroleum Resources, Gwede Mantashe, is still working on a mission to recover three bodies that are trapped underground at Lily Mine, according to Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni.
According to Ntshavheni, Mantashe also kept up with the mine owners to make sure the mine reopened following the devastating 2016 accident.
In a fall-of-ground incident, the lamproom where Solomon Nyirenda, Pretty Nkambule, and Yvonne Mnisi were working collapsed, trapping them underground.
Following the accident, subsequent tremors hindered rescue efforts to gain access to the container.
Eighty-seven miners were successfully rescued during this incident.
However, after the rocks swallowed and covered the container they were in, Nkambule, Nyirenda, and Mnisi remained 80 metres below the surface.
“The Minister of Minerals and Petroleum, Gwede Mantashe, continues to engage the owner of the mine and the business rescue practitioner [BRP] with the aim of ensuring the reopening of the mine and the best solutions for the affected families, recovery of the three missing employees, and economic revival of the area,” Ntshavheni said.
“Vantage Goldfields will arrange and provide for the funding to reopen the mine … payment of outstanding salaries for employees, recruitment plans for former employees who are still unemployed, and the mine to start processing slime dams to generate income in the short term.”
Lawyers instructed to draft court papers
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba recently pledged to cover the cost of retrieving the three bodies trapped underground.
When contacted for comment, Mashaba told Sunday World that he has not heard back from the department or the BRP regarding his request for authorisation to recover the bodies that were trapped at Lily Mine.
According to him, ActionSA would be grateful to see action if Ntshavheni meant that engagements are still going on.
Mashaba said that because the proper authorities were not holding talks for permission, he was talking to the families of the three people whose bodies are still underground about how to proceed.
He emphasised that none of the relatives expressed optimism that the government would be able to recover those bodies.
“As it stands, I have instructed my lawyers to draft papers to the high court because it seems that BRP and the Department of Minerals are not willing to grant us permission.
“These families have been struggling for so long, and all we want is to have those bodies back at their homes and properly buried,” said Mashaba.
