**Hostage talks are under way to free five supervisors being held captive at a South African platinum mine.**About 500 miners took a total of eight supervisors hostage on Thursday morning in the North West Province. Three managed to escape during the night.
Eastern Platinum Limited told the BBC that police were conducting negotiations with the miners.
The contract workers are demanding that Eastern Platinum give them permanent jobs at the Crocodile River mine.
Efforts are being made to notify families of the hostages who are being kept 30 metres below the earth’s surface, company spokeswoman Charmaine Russell told BBC News.
“The miners have moved to a higher level, it is now easier to get to them because they are closer to the surface. Management with the assistance of the police are engaging with them to have the matter resolved soon,” she said.
‘Depressed’
No incidents of violence have been reported. The three men who escaped where unharmed but needed some medical attention and counselling, the AFP news agency reports.
Police spokesman Lesego Metsi told AFP the managers “were very cold, hungry and depressed when they came up but they did not have any physical injuries”.
The protesting miners work for two contractors, Sindile Mining and JIC Mining Services, Eastern Platinum said.
In a statement, the Canadian company’s president Ian Rozier said what the miners are demanding would be a contravention of the contractual agreement between the mine and the mining contractors.
Eastern Platinum has filed for an urgent court action which would order the workers to:
- Refrain from participating in illegal and unprotected strike action
- Release those who are being detained against their will
- Vacate the underground working areas.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), whose other members are currently engaged in a nationwide strike which has put the brakes on all 2010 World Cup construction in South Africa, has reportedly condemned the miners’ actions.