Sasol may have conceded at its AGM last week that it was reviewing its targets for greenhouse gas emissions, but perhaps it also ought to revisit the assistance it gives to staff the families of staff who die while working for the company.

In the past three years, 25 people have died while working at Sasol, 10 because of an explosion at Sasol’s ethylene plant in Secunda in September 2004. That explosion was a nadir for Sasol, eliciting the attention of government, the wrath of trade unions, and the anger of the public.

But while Sasol launched the “September 2004 Accident Trust” to make top-up payments to families of those injured, it was something of a shock to learn that, by July, this much-hyped trust had paid out a grand total of R872,962.

In the notes in its annual report, Sasol reveals that by July the trust had received 172 claims, of which 55 had been finalised. Ever the gentleman, Sasol also noted that “while accepting social responsibility, creating the trust is not an acknowledgement of legal liability”.

But the figures suggest that for the 55 final claims, the victims received on average the lowly sum of R15872.

At the AGM, Sasol company secretary Nereus Joubert was resolute when grilled by shareholder activist Theo Botha over Sasol’s safety record, and was quick to make all the right noises.

Botha asked a number of questions on Sasol’s environmental and safety record, including whether Sasol “ranked” its stakeholders in order of importance, placing shareholders above employees, for example. Predictably, the company said “no, we consider all stakeholders important to us”.

But do the paltry sums paid from the trust for the 2004 accident mean that the trust, which Sasol said was meant to “set a new standard” to ensure that those who were injured get fair compensation, is failing in its duty?

Not at all, says Joubert. After the AGM, Joubert said this R872,962 figure was out of date and he personally knew of a case where a R1m cheque had been written.

“This is a top-up scheme. The intention was to create a vehicle that would top up the amount to what [the victims] would have got had they gone to court.” he says.

So employees initially get a (usually woeful) payment from the compensation fund and most staff also get benefits from a “personal accident benefit fund”, which can be a multiple of their annual salary. Only after these payments have been made will the trust consider a payment.

Importantly, contractors, who don’t benefit from the personal accident benefit fund, can claim from the trust.

But if the trust’s plan was to “expedite claims,” why have only a third of the cases been finalised?

Joubert says: “It might look slow but had it gone to court, it would have taken much longer.”. Support for Sasol comes from an unlikely source. Richard Spoor, the feisty human rights attorney who has had Anglo Platinum under pressure over community rights in mining areas, has been negotiating on behalf of Secunda workers.

“There are people who are happy and people who are unhappy, but Sasol has at least set a hellishly important precedent,” says Spoor. He says Sasol is the first company to acknowledge that damages paid by the compensation fund are far too low, and to offer to top them up.

Most companies, says Spoor, simply shrug their shoulders when there’s an accident, because it doesn’t cost them a cent, other than to replace broken machinery.

Overall, Sasol measures its safety record by recordable case rate (RCR), which is a global measure of the number of work-related injuries (beyond first-aid cases) for every 200,000 employee hours worked.

By June, this figure was sitting at 0,75 – an improvement from the 0,93 last year. In practice, this meant that last year, Sasol faced one major safety incident every 266,000 work hours. However, this is still nearly double the target it plans to meet within four years of 0,4.

And it seems these figures are maleable too. In last year’s sustainability report, Sasol said its 2006 number was a “record 0,68″. Then this year, it rejigged the formula by adding in incidents involving “service providers”, not simply employees. It also included ‘occupational illnesses’, which were apparently excluded last year. This had the effect of pushing up last year’s RCR to 0,93 retrospectively.

Botha also took Sasol to task for “setting the bar too low” in its aim of slashing greenhouse gas emissions 10% by 2015. At this rate it would take until 2050 for it to reach zero emissions.

CEO Pat Davies said “taking into account our growth plans, it is a fairly stringent target”.

However, Davies said, “we are in fact having a look at this”. This will be good news for those who believe Sasol’s environmental targets are too soft, and could be ratcheted up by at least a notch or two. (For an enlightening read on Sasol’s emission plan, read this article from Business Day).

—