Three ArcelorMittal workers were trapped in a control room in the early hours of Wednesday 17 February when the room collapsed after a stack structure fell on it, following an explosion. Workers who witnessed the scene at the company’s plant in Vanderbijlpark in south Gauteng paint a grim picture. But the company denies an explosion occurred, despite no managers being there at the time.
“Today means that I will never see my brother ever again. When I heard that he’s no longer coming back home I cried a lot. He did everything for me. A day after he passed away, he was supposed to come fetch me so that we go to buy a PlayStation.”All the workers who spoke about the death of the trio say this incident could have been avoided. “What I’ve realised, the company is putting profit first over its workers.
“And the worst part is that this is a big company that generates quite a lot of money. So, this is when I realised that this means that our brothers and sisters who work for that company are neglected and the company’s attention is primarily on generating revenues,” said Maluka. The union is demanding a health and safety audit of all the company’s operations, that chief executive Kobus Verster be held criminally and personally liable “for the untimely death of our members, which is the direct responsibility of the company”, and an inquiry into the event with the inclusion of the union’s health and safety shop stewards in the investigations.“This plant is slowly becoming a burial site for workers in South Africa, which is something we must never allow.
According to a union shop steward on duty, when the three workers were trapped, this wasn’t the first explosion. “In March 2020, when we were all on alert level five [of the government’s Covid-19 lockdown], an explosion happened at a mixing station and no fatality happened, and again in June, another second explosion happened when a gas pipeline fell on top of the changing room number 10 and luckily again there were no employees. This is the third incident.