Stilfontein: Illegal miners can't surface 'without help'
Two organisations involved in efforts to rescue scores of suspected illegal miners who remain underground in Stilfontein are adamant that the group is trapped underground.
The General Industrial Workers Union of South Africa and the Mining Organisation Mining Affected Communities United in Action briefed the media on Monday morning.
The briefing came in the wake of an interim order by the High Court in Pretoria on Sunday, which ordered the government to allow the provision of humanitarian assistance.
The court ordered the police to allow the community and humanitarian organisations the opportunity to provide food, water, and medication to the illegal miners.
GIWUSA president Mametlwe Sebei said they believe it would only be possible for the miners to come to the surface with outside intervention.
“At shaft No 11, which is where the media has been located; it is simply not possible for the miners to come to the surface without assistance either by the community rescue or by the professional rescue team," said Sebei.
“I've also again seen that you know, people are saying we want to risk the lives of the policemen; nobody suggested that. Nobody suggests that this is going to be any person who's going to go underground.”
“The only people who volunteered to go underground are actually community members who are the families of the miners. They are the people who formally informed the artisanal miners underground that they need to surface because what happened is that the police came to the shaft and simply chased away the people who pulled in and out of the mine without prior warning.”
He said the move by the police cut off the lifeline to the miners and prevented them from resurfacing.
“Now, the police say they have not stopped anybody from coming up, and that's true. The fact of the matter is that shaft 11 is a three-kilometre hole that requires a whole team of people pulling people up for an hour just to bring one person up.”
“When they say the food supply - this is a recognition that it will take days and weeks to pull out those people, and if you use community rescue, meaning a manual pull through a rope and it will take us weeks.”
“The state said they want an expedited process so they have engaged the services of a professional rescue team with specialised equipment that then may take days in that situation. In that situation, we've said there is a need for food, water and medication to sustain those miners pending the ongoing rescue effort. This is not food, water and medication to keep the people underground. It is to keep people alive when they are rescued.”
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