afrol News, 3 November - South Africa's mining industry may be forced into mass retrenchments with pressure of global slump.

Union officals have already received an official notification from one of the largest Platinum producers of plans to cut off on staff.

Local media reports said today that Union Solidary had been issued a notice of possible retrenchements, as mining companies work out a way of cutting back on expenses.

Lonmin, said to be third largest SA platinum producer is said to have already reported a 15.8 percent decline in its annual production due to a multiplicity of reasons, including weak metal prices on international markets.

Mining company is further said to have reported other losses as a result of recent safety hits as well as power cuts which set back production earlier this year.

Union officials have said apart from platinum, other mining companies like in the gold industry were also contemplating on cutting down costs by laying off workers, a concern that has also been raised by government's statistics agency saying the country's industry showed a loss of 32,000 jobs in third quarter of this year.

South Africa, which produces over 70 per cent of world's platinum as well as a major player in gold has168,479 employees in platinum mining, which represents 37 percent of mining industry's 458,600 workers. Some large numbers of employees are still to be coming from smaller neighbours of South Africa, such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland, whose remmittances have played a major role in alleviating rural poverty in their respective countries.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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