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'Angry' miners freed from mine
04/10/2007 06:52 - (SA)
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| Relieved mineworkers come out of the mine. (Themba Hadebe, AP) |
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Johannesburg - Almost 600 miners of the 3 200 trapped underground have been rescued from Harmony Gold's Elandsrand mine on Thursday morning, a union official said.
"They are quite angry because they feel that management has not communicated with them about the rescue operation or how long it would take," said National Union of Mineworkers' national health and safety chairperson Peter Bailey shortly after 06:00.
He said 200 of the 3200 trapped workers had been underground since Tuesday night. An alternative exit was not accessible because it was underwater, he said.
Those that had been brought out were exhausted, hungry, stressed out and relieved, he added. About 75 workers were being extracted at a time via a small shaft normally used to bring equipment into the mine. They were trapped around level 73 of the mine, about 2 200m underground, after a pipe fell into the lift shaft and cut off the power supply to the lift normally used to hoist workers out of the mine.
Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica was expected at the mine on Thursday morning, Bailey said earlier.
The Elandsrand mine was 3 566 metres deep and would have 117 levels when it was completed. The miners were trapped around level 73.
Harmony acquired Elandsrand and the adjacent Deelkraal mine from AngloGold for R1bn in cash in February 2001.
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