BMWU hampered by legislation
Onalenna Kelebeile | Thursday July 21, 2016 09:57
The Minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology and area MP Nonofho Molefhi highlighted this during a visit to the union recently. Molefhi had advised the union to engage an independent evaluator so that it helps them to have a major contribution from an informed position.
In an interview, BMWU president Jack Tlhagale said they accept the suggestion of engaging an independent evaluator but there is no way they can go about it because it is not entrenched in the law. “Our Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) does not have a clause that empowers us to do that. It is not legislated. MOA only allows us to do inspections together and the only external personnel legally allowed is the inspector of mines,” he added.
He expressed concern that this limits all the union’s possible moves. He said it is the main reason why in most cases the mine management only want to engage the branch committee on issues of concern, because the national executive committee is viewed as an outsider.
“In fact we seriously considered engaging a private consultant after Selebi Shaft that claimed three lives last year. It is a good thing but how do we go about it? We therefore propose to the Commissioner of Labour to create regulations that would give us those powers otherwise our contributions cannot be meaningful when there is no access,” he added.
Meanwhile Tlhagale said they are not convinced that BCL is in a position to become a mining museum. He added that the mine management only decry financial challenges not low value ore and added that they are strongly concerned that Polaris 11 that has exhausted all BCL reserves is a secret.
“It was conceived and developed on BCL funds and is not giving any return on investment. It should have been able to liberate the mine to survive the current situation however, it only achieved exhaustion of funds,” he said.