JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South Africa’s Sibanye-Stillwater said on Friday that it was working to bring to the surface 260 miners, who were stuck underground at one of its gold mines after the hoist system used to access the shaft was damaged in an accident.
The company said what it called a “shaft incident” had occurred on Thursday at the Kloof gold mine, one of Sibanye’s deepest, situated about 60 km (37 miles) west of Johannesburg.
All the workers were safe and gathered at an assembly point where they had been provided with food while efforts were being prepared to bring them out of the mine Friday afternoon, it said.
“It was decided that employees should remain at the sub-shaft station until it is safe to proceed to the surface,” the company said.
A spokesperson had earlier said 289 workers were underground in the mine’s Kloof 7 shaft.
Johannesburg-based Sibanye is among only a few South African miners squeezing profits from some of the world’s deepest and costliest gold mines. Sibanye is digging for gold at its Kloof 7 shaft at depths of about 3,200 meters (about 2 miles).
The Kloof mine, which accounts for 14% of Sibanye’s total gold output, also operates two other shafts. The company also mines platinum-group metals in South Africa and the United States.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earlier said it had received reports of the incident, which it said happened at around 1000 pm (0800 pm GMT) on Thursday.
Mining accidents are not uncommon in South Africa, where many abandoned mines have been taken over by informal diggers.
Earlier this year, at least 78 bodies were pulled from an illegal gold mine after police cut off food and water supplies for months in an attempt to crack down on illegal mining activity.
(Reporting by Felix Njini in Johannesburg, Writing by Bhargav Acharya and Felix Njini;Editing by Bate Felix and Joe Bavier)
