Another mining tip

12 March 2012

Via Inca Kola News:

… On Tuesday March 6^th José Alfredo Flores Flores, 29 years old, was killed by underground rockfall at the AuRico Ocampo mine in Mexico. The accident occurred as Flores was collecting samples in a disused shaft area of the complex. The two people accompanying him were also injured, one with serious head injuries. The body of Flores has not yet been recovered from the accident zone because the company says that the rock in the zone is still unstable and it’s too risky to go there for a while (16). None of this has been reported by AuRico, not by the company (17) to its shareholders, not to the press and the only way that your author knows about it is that he can read Spanish and makes a point of watching for news on mining companies in the LatAm region. Even worse, AUQ did put out a NR after the incident that made no mention at all to the Ocampo fatality but preferred to give shareholders the warm and fuzzy about its development at the Young-Davidson property.

Let’s be clear here: If a fatality happens at a mine owned by Newmont, Barrick, Gold Fields, or any other world-class mining company you care to mention, the company will have the moral fibre needed to tell the world about its misfortune. The best juniors, the ones in which I look to as potential and actual investments, are the ones that will do things the way the big boys do. Are you seriously expecting me to invest my money in a company like AUQ that can’t even show the most basic and common decency to its workforce? The management style of the 20^th century has to remain in the past and the idiots that insist on continuing its style, such as the idiots that run AUQ, need to be first called out and then put out to grass as they have no place in the mining industry of the future.