Anglo American Discloses All Mine Deaths in Industry Shift--Update
February 20 2020 - 10:11AM
Dow Jones News
By Alistair MacDonald
Anglo American PLC, one of the world's largest miners, gave a
full picture of fatalities related to its operations Thursday, a
major shift in an industry that typically undercounts the number of
deaths.
A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed in December that
many mining deaths are not captured by global safety statistics,
making the industry seem safer to regulators, investors and
consumers.
Four Anglo American employees were killed at its managed
operations in 2019, the company said in its full-year results.
Taking into account other incidents -- including employees who died
off-site in road accidents, two who died in 'security incidents'
and one at a joint venture that Anglo doesn't manage -- a total of
18 miners died.
Miners don't report deaths at joint ventures they don't manage,
despite having influence over health and safety policy, leaving
dozens of fatalities off the books. Fatalities that occur during
the transportation of mined materials are also often
undercounted.
"We are not terribly good as an industry at reporting all
incidents," said Anglo's Chief Executive Mark Cutifani. "They are
our colleagues, we know them all, so we report all of those types
of incidents," he said, talking of some of the deaths outside of
mine sites last year.
Between 2010 and 2018, the world's three largest publicly listed
miners, BHP Group Ltd., Rio Tinto PLC and Vale SA, reported 117
deaths globally at their managed operations.
There were an additional 89 deaths of workers during the same
period at joint ventures the companies weren't running, according
to a Journal analysis of company and government records, stripping
out double counting.
Miners have reduced fatalities and injuries in recent decades,
but a lack of reliable accounting in the most basic safety metric
makes it difficult to determine the extent of any gains.
Anglo's disclosure "represents a very significant development
which can and should become an industry standard," said Adam
Matthews, director of ethics and engagement at the Church of
England Pensions Board, which has around $3.3 billion under
management.
The pressure to improve safety and transparency is especially
intense after a mine-waste dam operated by Vale burst last year,
unleashing a river of mud in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho.
In another example of how mining deaths are underreported, the
Brazilian government doesn't count many contractors who die in
mining accidents. As a result, as many as 139 of the 270 people who
died at Brumadinho weren't classified as mining deaths.
BHP, the world's largest miner, also recently began disclosing
in some publications all deaths at all of its operations. Anglo
went further on Thursday by tallying all deaths related to its
operations high in its annual results announcement and placing that
number alongside fatalities at managed operations.
Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 20, 2020 10:56 ET (15:56 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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