Safety & health

Our approach to safety and the journey to achieve our goal of zero harm is an ongoing process. To achieve our goal, every employee and contractor must be empowered and enabled to act safely. For us, in an enabled environment, risk exposure is reduced by consistent, constant attention to maintaining a safe workplace with the required equipment, tools, and material that empower every person to deliver sustainable, safe production. That is why we are committed to ensuring that everyone working in our facilities has the appropriate resources, training and personal protective equipment to work safely. We also expect employees to take ownership of health and safety, comply with standards and procedures and immediately report any unhealthy or dangerous situation.  

As part of our journey to zero harm, we have created a Virtual Centre of Excellence in Innovative Mining Safe Production so that 19 tertiary institutions worldwide can share their specialist competencies, including mining-related safety and health, human factors, risk management, training modernisation, mining-related seismicity and sustainability concepts.

In 2018, we also formed a Global Safe Production Advisory Panel, comprising five leading globally recognized safety experts, to provide international insight and guidance based on best practices to drive continuous advancement in safe mining. Our Zero Harm Strategic Framework, which was developed and implemented in 2018 in collaboration with organised labor and the Department of Mineral Resources in South Africa, emphasizes our CARES values as the basis for decision-making. Additionally, each of our regions has developed safety campaigns that align with its unique culture. These enhanced safety initiatives helped achieve significant improvement in the Group’s safety performance in 2019.

We strive to maintain the safety and health of our employees through the identification, monitoring and reduction of exposure risks that can lead to occupational disease such as heat, radiation, noise and dust.

As with safety, each region has tailored its own needs-specific approach to health and wellness programs. In Southern Africa, we provide individualised care including access to occupational health resources that assess health risks and fitness to work, shaft clinics close the workplace, satellite primary healthcare clinics, 24/7 primary healthcare centres, emergency medical services, hospital networks offering specialized care, and medical aid that protects our employees from the financial risk of high medical costs.

Our Road Map to Health, a proactive health model, has led to a decline in deaths, medical incapacitation rates and hospitalisation. We have successfully reduced the impact of communicable diseases – specifically tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS – on our workforce in South Africa, including reducing tuberculosis infections by 68 percent since 2014, and are expanding efforts to include a focus on mental health and non-communicable diseases. Our health care model has earned national and international recognition from the global Chief Medical Officers Network and the South African Department of Health.

We are also working to align our health care model with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2015 to 2030, in particular, Goal 3, which relates to universal access to good health care and equity in health care.

The National Department of Health in collaboration with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases have developed aa comprehensive set of guidelines in preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic. Sibanye-Stillwater has included these guidelines into the Group Emergency Preparedness plan which will screen employees with symptoms, those returning from leave and employees who have had close contact with a confirmed or probable case. A management toolkit has been distributed to all operations and health facilities which includes education of health care workers and PPE.

The plan will also focus on several preventative measures within the company and community in collaboration with local government and provincial structures. Measures that are being rolled out include hand washing, distribution of hand sanitisers to employees, decontamination of employee conveyances and education of the workforce.

For the most up-to-date information, follow our response to COVID-19

In November 2014, Sibanye-Stillwater, Anglo American Limited, AngloGold Ashanti Limited, Gold Fields Limited, Harmony Gold Limited
and African Rainbow Minerals Limited formed an occupational lung disease (OLD) industry working group to address issues relating to
compensation for OLD in the gold mining industry of South Africa. As part of the working group, Sibanye-Stillwater has been involved in tracking and tracing employees to settle claims relating to silicosis.
We have also collaborated with financial institutions and the Mineworkers Provident Fund in distributing unclaimed pension funds.

In May 2016, a class-action suit, filed to obtain compensation for South African gold miners affected by silicosis or TB, was approved by
the High Court in Johannesburg with parties finally reached an agreement in May 2018. In an historic judgment, the court approved this
agreement on July 26 2019.

The Tshiamiso Trust, registered on 28 November 2019, has been tasked with locating, verifying, medically screening and paying out thousands of miners across southern Africa.

The websites below provides more information relating to the court application and settlement agreement:

• www.silicosissettlement.co.za
• www.oldcollab.co.za