SOUTH African mining companies and lawyers claiming compensation for employees affected by silicosis were on the brink of an out-of-court settlement totalling R5bn, said BusinessLive citing Richard Spoor, the attorney who has largely led the charge in years of litigation.
In a separate development, attorneys representing employees and the Occupational Lung Disease Working Group, the organisation representing gold mining firms, as well as Anglo American and African Rainbow Minerals, called a press conference in Johannesburg for 3pm tomorrow (May 3) and said they would make documentation available from 2.30pm.
“We are sitting on the brink of reaching an agreement in this matter and we hope to have it confirmed in writing and signed on Thursday, but the terms aren’t fully agreed yet and there’s still a bit of to-and-fro,” Spoor told BusinessLive.
Mining companies would not pay the full R5bn into the trust, but rather a portion of it to fund the trust’s work; then they would make payments as claimants came into the system over the next 12 years or so and as the trust made cash calls on companies, said Graham Briggs, chairman of the working group in an interview with BusinessLive.
In the 12 months to end-October 2017, there were 7,756 compensation payments made to former miners with occupational lung diseases worth R226m, compared with 1,628 compensation payments worth R79m in the same period in 2015, said Briggs.
