{"id":8885,"date":"2012-03-14T03:08:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T01:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/03\/s-africa-court-suspends-northam-mine-safety-stoppage\/"},"modified":"2012-03-14T03:08:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T01:08:20","slug":"s-africa-court-suspends-northam-mine-safety-stoppage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/s-africa-court-suspends-northam-mine-safety-stoppage\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Africa court suspends Northam mine safety stoppage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

By Ed Stoddard<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

JOHANNESBURG, March 13<\/span> (Reuters) – South Africa’s
\nLabour Court has suspended a safety stoppage at a mine operated
\nby Northam Platinum in the first corporate legal
\nchallenge to a government drive that has cut output in the
\nworld’s largest platinum producer, a union said.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

South Africa’s department of mineral resources has upped
\non-site inspections and dramatically increased its issuing of
\n“Section 54s” — the regulation evoked to temporarily close
\nmining operations for safety violations.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

“Northam Platinum brought an application for an urgent
\ninterdict in order to have a section 54 order issued to the
\ncompany’s Zondereinde mine declared invalid,” trade union
\nSolidarity said in a statement.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

“The Labour Court provisionally ruled in the employer’s
\nfavour and gave the department until 27 March 2012 to submit
\nreplying affidavits,” it said.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither the company nor officials at the department of
\nmineral resources were immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

But a copy of the court order obtained by Reuters says that
\nthe Section 54 is “suspended, pending the resolution of this
\napplication”.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a challenge is rare and comes against the backdrop of
\nindustry frustration at the safety campaign and the blanket
\nnature of the stoppages, which have seen the closure of entire
\nmines.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Safety-related stoppages cost the platinum sector 300,000
\nounces last year in lost output — about 5 percent of global
\nproduction and worth about $500 million at current prices.
\n\u00a0 Continued…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ed Stoddard JOHANNESBURG, March 13 (Reuters) – South Africa’s Labour Court has suspended a safety stoppage at a mine operated by Northam Platinum in the first corporate legal challenge to a government drive that has cut output in the world’s largest platinum producer, a union said. South Africa’s department of mineral resources has upped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-8885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}