THE PRICE OF PLATINUM

South African mine owners are complaining about government interference in the safety precautions in their booming industry. "A surge in government-ordered safety stoppages has already hit output in the world's largest platinum producer and the murder of a female miner underground last month means South Africa's mines are going to come under even more scrutiny. With deaths among miners up 10 percent in the first two months of this year - albeit alongside a sharp drop in injuries - the industry is going to keep feeling the heat. Mine deaths have plunged since the end of white-minority apartheid rule in 1994 but around 10 miners, the vast majority of them black, are still killed every month, chiefly in accidents." (Reuters, 7 March) Every month ten workers die in the mining industry and the owners are complaining about interference in their profit making. RD