Rio Tinto under fire for safety after deaths in Indonesia

15th Apr 2014 21:32

Rio Tinto was on Tuesday accused by unions and protestors of neglecting safety, leading to the deaths of 33 people in Indonesia last year.Trade union IndustriAll, which represents 50m industrial workers worldwide, said Rio had committed "very wide breaches of fundamental rights" and could have done more to prevent the deaths of the gold miners.The miners died when a tunnel collapsed at the Grasberg mine, Rio's joint venture with US company Freeport, last May. Kemal Özkan, assistant general secretary of IndustriAll, claimed that the Indonesian human rights commission found that the operators of the mine "had the ability to prevent this from happening but didn't"."The lack of effort jeopardised the lives of others. The gravity of this case is serious," he quoted Indonesian human rights commissioner Natalius Pigai as saying in a report into the incident.Rio's Chairman Jan du Plessis called it a tragedy and said the company was working to improve safety. "We've got to be [by far] one of the leaders in this field [safety]," he said at the company's annual meeting in London.He confessed that the Grasberg mine, the world's largest gold mine, was "far from perfection" but said Rio's board believed both safety and environmental issues were unable to be resolved by pulling out of the operation in Papua.The news came as Rio reported record first-quarter iron ore production and shipments.Shares fell 3.11% at end of trading in London on Tuesday. RD