STAFF RATIONALISATION
Pan African shares flat in spite of job cuts
The producer joins a growing list of gold and platinum mining companies in SA laying off workers
Thursday’s update from Pan African Resources that it had agreed to pay R160m to retrench 1,700 workers at its Evander gold mine did nothing to stimulate its moribund share price. Shares in Pan African, which is listed in Johannesburg and London, have lost more than half their value in the past 12 months, with the high-cost Evander mine in Mpumalanga among the group’s concerns. Pan African cited the low rand gold price and the inability to return the Evander underground mine to profit as the reason for closing the underperforming mine, joining a growing list of gold and platinum mining companies in SA laying off workers and closing shafts. Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe has blamed SA’s falling gold production partly on mining companies mothballing shafts that could potentially be profitable in the hands of smaller companies with lower overhead costs. He warned the spate of closures in the gold sector was pushing a reluctant Department of Mineral Resources into invoking the...
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