RESCUE workers yesterday located three miners missing in the Lily Mine collapse.
They are tapping to show where they are in a steel container under millions of tons of rock.
NOW THE RACE IS ON TO SAVE THEM!
The three workers are Pretty Nkambule, Yvonne Mnisi and Solomon Nyerende.
They were among 87 miners trapped underground on Friday morning in the collapse of a mine shaft near Mpumalanga’s Barberton.
By Saturday morning, 57 workers had been rescued and taken to hospital and 56 were discharged the same day.
At the time of going to print yesterday, rescuers were saying that the tapping sound indicated that the three were still alive.
Mine management said it’s now a race against time as the workers had been there for four days.
Meanwhile, the department of mineral resources served the mine with a closure notice, after Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane visited it on Friday.
The National Union of Mineworkers and Amcu expressed concern at the growing trend of miners being trapped under- ground and the rising mining death toll.
NUM health and safety secretary Erick Gcilitshana said the union called on employers to take safety seriously.
“It is unacceptable that mineworkers are denied their basic human right to work in an environment that guarantees their safety, and that instead they are expected to go to work to die,” he said.
Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa said the disaster was no act of God, but the result of management’s disdain for its workers.
“To them, we are just machines to satisfy their lust for profits,” he said.
At the time of going to press last night a source at the mine said there might have been another rockfall.
“It had been confirmed that they were alive earlier, but the fear is that if they are not rescued today they might not make it out alive,” the source said.
