1) The employer must ensure that a competent person reports to the employer, at appropriate intervals determined in accordance with the mine's risk assessment, on the adequacy of escape and rescue procedures at the mine relating to explosions, fires and flooding.
1) The employer of every coal mine must ensure that no person goes underground at the mine without a body-worn self-contained self-rescuer, which complies with the South African Bureau of Standards specification SABS 1737.
2) If at any mine other than a coal mine, the risk assessment in terms of section 11 shows that there is a significant risk that employee’s may be exposed to irrespirable atmospheres at any area at the mine, the employer must ensure that no person goes into such area without a body-worn self-contained self-rescuer, which complies with the South African Bureau of Standards specification SABS 1737.
3) Any body-worn self-contained self-rescuer supplied to any employee, employed in a full time capacity at the mine, in terms of sub regulations 16.2(1) and 16.2(2), must be allocated to the employee for that employee’s sole use for the duration of the deployment of that self-contained self-rescuer at the mine or until that self-contained self-rescuer becomes defective and the employee is issued with another self-contained self-rescuer as required by these regulations.
1) The employer must ensure that no defective self-contained self-rescuer is issued for use to any employee at a mine.
1) The employer must annually have a representative sample of the self-contained self-rescuers at the mine tested by an organization accredited to do so in terms of the South African National Accreditation System for assessment of the structural integrity and functional performance.
Such representative sample must not be less than 1% of the self-contained self-rescuers at the mine and must be representative of the age and deployment of the self-contained self-rescuers.
2) The employer must keep the following information, on self-contained self-rescuers at the mine, covering the preceding 24 months: -
a) total number and makes of self-contained self-rescuers in service at the mine;
b) number and make of self-contained self-rescuers purchased by the mine in that period;
c) number and make of self-contained self-rescuers withdrawn from use by the mine in that period;
d) the number of shifts worked per day (1 , 2 or 3);
e) number of self-contained self-rescuers in daily use (average for each month);
f) number of employees underground (average per shift);
g) number of spare self-contained self-rescuers available (average per month);
h) a tabulation of the type of defects found;
i) number of self-contained self-rescuers repairedlrefurbished; and
j) number of self-contained self-rescuers tested in terms of regulation 16.4(1).