BY NIREN TOLSI –
MINING company Lonmin continued paying out dividends to shareholders — sometimes more than R2bn in a financial year — despite pleading that it had no money to fulfil its legal obligation to build houses for employees. This emerged on the penultimate day of evidence being led at the Farlam commission of inquiry that is investigating the circumstances of 44 deaths that occurred at the company’s Marikana operations in August 2012 during a wildcat strike
This emerged on the penultimate day of evidence being led at the Farlam commission of inquiry that is investigating the circumstances of 44 deaths that occurred at the company’s Marikana operations in August 2012 during a wildcat strike.
The lack of proper housing and basic services for Lonmin’s miners, many of whom lived in squalor in informal settlements around the mine, has been cited as one of the factors that led to the demand for a monthly wage of R12,500.
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