JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – If South Africa nationalises its mining industry, it will be stripped of its remaining mining skills, says Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland.

Holland says that international resources companies already see South Africa as a fertile hunting ground for the recruitment of miners.

“We’re already short of skills on our operations and, if you nationalise the operations, you’ll have a significant exodus of the remaining skills that we do have, and I'm not too sure where you are going to get the skills then to run mines,” he adds.

In announcing Gold Fields’ R30-million investment in South African universities for the development of human resources for mining, Holland said last year that South Africa was already down to a “staggeringly low” 500 practising mining engineers, whose average age was a high 47.

Moreover, Holland’s contention is that the mines have already been nationalised.

“It’s already happened. The resources vest in the State. We rent the resources from the State, and we pay royalties and taxes to rent those resources from the State,” he adds.

South Africa’s mines are operated in accordance with social and labour plans and employment equity targets.

“What more is there to gain from taking nationalisation to the next step? I hope that sanity does prevail. I think it will.

“What we have to do is exploit the resources in the country for the benefit of all stakeholders, employees, communities, and the government, and, if we can do that, I see no reason to change the existing model,” he says.

Besides the mining engineer shortage, there is a similar scarcity of middle managers.

Holland pointed out during the announcement of Gold Fields’ investment in skills development last year that mine manager certifications had declined from 123 in 1997 to a mere 25 in 2008, with the 25 emerging from an original 822 applications.

South Africa’s Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu has praised Gold Fields for its investment in human resource development development and has urged other mining companies to follow suit.

The gold company is providing a three-year financial underpin of the mining engineering faculties at both the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

“It’s critical that we start increasing the graduate pipeline,” says Holland.

In addition to the R26-million three-year pledge to the two universities, Gold Fields spends R200-million a year on education and training, which includes basic literacy.

At its own academy, the company has produced certified mine managers from people who arrive unable to read or write English.

The capital injection that Gold Fields has provided at Wits has been used for the expansion of the fourth quadrant of the Chamber of Mines building that houses the faculty of engineering, as well as the upgrade and equipping of the new 200-seater “world first” mine design laboratory.