Labour

Falls of ground have remained one of the most significant causes of fatal accidents in the South African underground mining industry. In an effort to combat this, the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) formulated new Fall of Ground Regulations, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 14 of the Mine Health and Safety Act, in July 2002. These came into effect in January 2003.

Two groups are affected by these regulations: people who are required to declare a working place safe ('Competent Person A'), and those who are required to install, maintain or remove any support unit ('Competent Person B'). These groups need to be assessed and found competent in accordance with education and training standards and qualifications as generated by the Mining Qualifications Authority (MQA). The MQA determined the specific competencies required to perform these activities and grouped the associated unit standards into clusters. These clusters of unit standards were registered as skills programmes.

As this was one of the first sets of regulations that placed the responsibility on employers to determine the competence of employees, the MQA decided to select four lead sites to pilot the implementation process. AngloGold Ashanti was selected as a gold mining lead site. The assessment and implementation process was carried out at AngloGold Ashanti's South Africa region's business units simultaneously, so that any problems encountered could be timeously communicated to the MQA.

Implementation schedule

Some 16,000 production employees, who performed the tasks referred to in the regulations, needed to be found competent in the West Wits and Vaal River areas. As it would not have been possible to complete the requirements of the regulations for so many people in the six month window period allowed, it was necessary for an application for exemption to be lodged with the DME. Before this could be done, an implementation schedule had to be developed.

The following factors were considered in the development of this schedule:

• development of learning materials and assessment checklists for the required unit standards;
• ISO 9001 certification (ISO 9001 is an internationally recognised quality management system developed by the International Standards Organization, and is a pre-requisite for MQA accreditation);
• MQA accreditation as an accredited training provider;
• development of an Assessment and Moderation Policy;
• training and registration of assessors and moderators;
• registration of learners on the MQA database (Praxis);
• the training and assessment process; and
• site specific competency matrices, setting out the specific requirements of the relevant occupations at each mine.

Once the schedule had been developed it became apparent that a period of 18 months would be necessary for the completion of the implementation plan. An application for exemption for compliance with the relevant regulations was submitted to the DME in December 2002. The application was approved and the necessary exemption granted.

Recognition of prior learning

As noted previously, a population of some 16,000 employees was covered by the project. The scale of the project necessitated a change from the normal training and assessment methodology in practice in the training centres. Various models were considered, but with the new outcomes-based unit standards, an opportunity arose to apply Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) principles. (The principle of RPL is to recognise competence achieved through past practices whilst ensuring alignment with the specific outcomes of the required unit standards to eliminate any gaps.)

All of the employees had been trained and assessed previously against the best practice training material, which had been used prior to the development of unit standards. It was accordingly decided that re-testing was only necessary in terms of the 'knowledge' components of the new unit standards, as this had not been covered by the previous training.

Employees found competent in the 'knowledge' component of the unit standards would be deemed competent to perform the tasks outlined in the Fall of Ground Regulations. Those found not yet competent would be retrained and assessed. The RPL and retraining of most employees was completed within one day.

Although the principle of 'once competent always competent' applies to unit standard outcomes-based training and development, all employees are still reviewed on their knowledge on returning from annual leave and refresher training is given where necessary.

Training and assessment process

The current training resources were not able to cope with the magnitude of training and assessment required for this project, so a training and assessment model was developed and presented to the AngloGold Ashanti South Africa region executive. This model was accepted and a budget of R4.2 million ($660,000) for 2003 approved for the project. 35 assistant training and development officers were employed and trained as subject matter experts and as workplace assessors. Assessment and training commenced in September 2002. Initially, employees were assessed on their return from leave but this did not provide a constant number of employees to be assessed and trained each day so it was decided to schedule employees on a call- up system. A reporting system was put in place on the intranet to enable progress to be monitored daily.

Conclusion

The project was successfully implemented. The West Wits mines completed the process during the last quarter of 2004, within the exemption period allowed by the DME. In the Vaal River area two mines had to apply for a further extension to the initial exemption period granted, owing to various logistical problems, and are expecting to complete the project in the course of 2005.

The capacity of the MQA to receive the data submitted by the training centres via the internet was found to be insufficient and they had to upgrade both the connection portals and server.

The lessons learnt in the planning and execution of the implementation of the new Fall of Ground Regulations were communicated monthly to the MQA at various steering and co-ordinating committee meetings by the four lead sites. Other mining houses have used this information to assist them during their implementation projects.