The Mine Rescue Service team to extract illegal miners at shaft 11 in Stilfontein, North West, has been completed.
This after the team conducted a final sweep, to verify the information provided by volunteers who’ve been helping to retrieve the miners, told the team that there are no longer illegal miners or dead bodies left underground.
A total of 246 alive illegal miners have been retrieved and arrested since Monday, and 78 have been certified dead.
According to the acting North West police commissioner Major-General Patrick Asaneng, the rescue team will provide a report on the assessment of the situation.
Moreover, Asaneng said the relevant departments, especially Mineral Resources and Energy, will take over regarding the next step.
Asaneng however sought to clarify that the operation will not be extended to other shafts in the area, following reports that the illegal miners might be hiding at other shafts in the area.
“Government was taken to court to extract people only on shaft 11, and not other shafts.
We did what we were ordered to do at this shaft.
People must not think that the government is in the process of conducting rescue missions on other shafts,” said Asaneng.
He said the rescue team has also indicated that it’ll be a challenge to enter the shafts, as they first must study it, and based on their observation it’ll be a “futile exercise to undertake the operation as the shafts are not the same.
Asaneng emphasised that Operation Vala Umgodi will continue, and officers will remain on side and in other areas where illegal mining is taking place.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Consular General in South Africa, Eria Phiri, said their working with the government, in the identification, verification and profiling of Zimbabweans who were extracted at the shaft.
“We want to start with the verification and identification of the 465 who have been brought to the surface alive.
Using those 465, we would try to extract as much information as possible, so that we have some indication of who exactly was operating underground with those from Zimbabwe, then we would conduct our head office back home,” explained Phiri.
He acknowledged that the task will be difficult to identify the deceased, as most of them aren’t documented or their bodies are badly decomposed.
“We will satisfy ourselves first whether they are Zimbabweans or not by conducting DNA tests.
Then we’ll take our next step in the repatriation of the deceased back to Zimbabwe so that they have a decent burial back home.
We would also need to identify their relatives to do the DNA tests, so that some of them are decomposed to make a clear identification,” remarked Phiri.
According to the police a total of 246 alive illegal miners have been retrieved and arrested since Monday, and 78 have been certified dead.
Of those arrested, 128 are Mozambicans, 80 from Lesotho, 33 Zimbabweans and five South Africans.
