The Sunday Times in South Africa on 2 February 2014, under
the heading “Guards send on death mission” reported on the alleged death
of three security officers at the Blyvooruitzicht Mine in South Africa where
the security company (for ethical reasons name withheld) hired to protect the
assets of the mine against illegal miners “underestimated the security
threat at the mine”.
The brother of one of the three diseased security officers
commented as follows “We were told that the ‘security company’ didn’t
do a risk assessment and the guards were not ready for the task”. The security
officers were killed with pangas and R5 rifles. They were overpowered (a
spokesperson from the new owners of the mine alleged they were sleeping) and
gold bearing material were stolen from the processing plant.
The lessons to be learnt once again is the importance
of the risk assessment – the baseline risk assessment on all existing posts and
the task or issue based risk assessment on new or changing situations as the
supplement to the baseline risk assessment.
A few other issues that can be considered based on the
information in the Sunday Times article:
- The spokesperson from the new owners of Blyvoor indicated that they have used four security companies since December as companies withdrew their services – always the question one has to ask why did someone withdraw from a security contract in times when business is tight – there should have been a reason
- The General Manager of the security company commented “I was given the instructions to deploy people, ……….the guards were armed and attacked while they were being deployed”
- The ‘security company’ allegedly phoned the deceased, who were unemployed after being retrenched by another company, the Saturday morning and he died that same night on his first shift at work – was he inducted, did he do a medical, if he was equipped with a fire arm (armed guards were used at the processing plant) was he trained and had a competency and most importantly would he for the sake of his family have a funeral benefit cover from the Private Security Industry Provident Fund
In conclusion – risk determine safeguards to be employed,
training to be conducted and most importantly to determine if one has to say
“‘no thank you” in the interest of our employees, and the reputation of our
company. Secondly to ensure that employment practices and legal compliance is
100% in order before an employee is taken on in the company.
”One can
replace the stolen gold bearing material by writing a cheque, but there
is no cheque big enough to replace the lives of the three security officers”
