Harmony halts mining in section where two workers were killed

Mining activity at a section of Harmony's Kusasalethu mine, near Carletonville in Gauteng, has been halted pending an investigation following the death of two employees.

They were killed following a seismic event resulting in a fall of ground on Thursday morning.

The source of the seismic event is still under investigation, a Harmony spokesperson told Fin24.

Mining activity in the affected area has been stopped and safety shifts have also been enforced across the mine, pending a formal investigation.

Kusasalethu is Harmony’s deepest mine, with a depth of 3 388m, and extracts ore from the Ventersdorp reef.

• READ | Mining-related deaths cast dark shadow over companies' golden cycle of high profits

Over the past financial year, the mine suffered a loss of R458 million. This was because of a significant decline in the recovered grade, which the company blamed on "geological factors" and "seismicity".

“In respect of geology, given the erratic nature of the Ventersdorp Contact Reef, some areas planned to be mined yielded much lower grades than anticipated,” the group said.