Mine Occupational Safety and Health Leading Practice Adoption System (MOSH) examined - the promise and pitfalls of this employer-led initiative to improve health and safety in South African Mines (original) (raw)

2015, Journal of The South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy

responsibilities, which include a biennial review of health and safety. The review takes the form of a convention called the Mine Health and Safety Summit. At the Summit of 2003, the tripartite partners agreed to establish targets for health and safety, and intermediate milestones for the period 2003 to 2013 (DMR, 2013) (Table I). The 2010 Summit launched a framework that included guiding principles, commitments and action points, to shift health and safety culture, referred to in the sector as the Culture Transformation Framework. As seen in Table I, the goals for 2013 involved reducing the number of fatalities to levels attained by the mining sectors of Australia, the USA, and the Ontario province of Canada; and from 2013 onwards, eliminating new cases of silicosis and noise-induced hearing loss. The attainment of these milestones represented a considerable challenge. Before MOSH began piloting leading practices to address health and safety challenges in 2008, the sector relied solely on the individual efforts of mining companies to achieve the milestones. MOSH represented a shift to collective and informed effort, active promotion of promising interventions, and engagement of the entire sector, across all commodities and all regions of the country.