Mine safety and Industrial accidents at the Générale des Carrières et des Mines, in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo

John Ngoy Kalenga

No 277, Discussion paper series. A from Graduate School of Economics and Business Administration, Hokkaido University

Abstract: This paper focuses on the workplace accidents of Gecamines in a comparative perspective. Copper industry has been the cornerstone of Congolese economy since the colonial era. Katanga province is well known for its reserves of copper and cobalt. Many accidents occurred in mining operations of Gecamines. We collected data of accidents from 1957 to 2008 during the fieldwork at Gecamines. Data of this study included only the accidents that required the miner to be absent from work for at least four calendar days. This study aims to determine factors of the accidents at Gecamines in order to suggest the policy to prevent the occurrence of accidents. The results show that miners at Gecamines were more exposed to the risk of accidents than their colleagues of similar industries in Australia, Canada and the United States of America. The average frequency, severity and number fatalities per year of Gecamines were 48, 3, and 9, respectively. These statistics were higher than those of the aforementioned three countries. Gecamines cared for the injured miners thus increasing the operating cost. These results imply that mine safety and working conditions at Gecamines should be improved to reduce the occurrence of accidents. The reduction of accidents should be achieved by training of miners and instauration of inspectors in charge of safety.

Keywords: Mine safety; accidents; Gecamines; Katanga; Copper industry; Autoregressive model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
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