South Africa mine explosion: 31 miners dead after underground incident

31 people have been killed in a methane gas explosion and a disused gold mine in South Africa the incident happened more than a month ago in the city of welcome but details are just coming out now the miners were reportedly working illegally and are from neighboring Lesotho Our Father Miller is joining us now from welcome in South Africa just bring us up to date with what

we know well we've heard from the minister of male resources here in South Africa or who is part of the operation to try and retrieve those bodies he his Department along with the owners of the mine Harmony gold and until now very little has happened we've heard from Harmony gold that they've been in discussions because the difficulty they say is that there's the presence of methane

gas in that shaft it was a disuse shaft one that Harmony gold says was never operational and I'm going to step out of shock just to give you a better idea of what we're looking at now at the moment there is a security team surrounding that mound of stones that you might see and every so often you see that methane gas and heat rising from what

is essentially a hole in the ground and that's where these illegal miners accessed the the mine shaft to mine gold there's still gold in many of these mine shafts in this area but they've been closed down or abandoned because they aren't financially viable for industrial Mining and this is where illegal miners come in so there are at least 31 bodies down there as you say this

explosion took place a month ago and it's just after that that family members of these miners approached authorities in Lesotho neighboring Lesotho a country that's surrounded by South Africa and it's thought that even illegal miners who are in this area didn't approach police here because of their activities and that they're illegal and they feared being arrested so family members of these illegal miners approach authorities in

Lesotho and that's when authorities in South Africa were contacted and this is why it's only coming to light now so it's a very slow start to this operation because of the presence of methane gas there's a concern they may be further explosions and their logistical and safety challenges for both the government and Harmony gold in trying to retrieve those bodies you've been reporting on illegal mining

as an ongoing issue for South Africa for a long time for Al jazeer family imagine because it's illegal though limits the amount of legal recourse there might be for the families of the victims just how bad is the situation with illegal mining in South Africa well it's a very complex situation for the South African government and also owners of these mines they're at least 6 000

abandoned mines in South Africa and very difficult to monitor it would involve a lot of security and also implementation of policies to try ensure that this doesn't continue There are tens of thousands of illegal miners some of them calling themselves artisanal Miners and they're pushing for the government to regulate the trade so that incidents like this don't happen so that there is greater safety and that

perhaps that they can feed into the economy and so that this trade isn't illicit at the moment we know that many of these miners spent weeks even months underground in in cramped shafts in the dark where it's very very hot and where there's very poor infrastructure and certainly safety is a concern once the sand that contains either gold that contains gold is brought up it's taken

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