These labour shortage concerns are compounded by safety issues, with statistics showing inexperienced miners incur the highest number of injuries, the majority of which come as a result of roof bolting activities.
To address this the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has released a new training guide for walk-thru roof bolters.
The NIOSH guide is designed to help safety trainers develop structured training for new operators of walk-thru bolting machines and help trainees learn the technology and build their skill levels.
It comes as a six-part DVD series, a skills check survey, discussion points and a complete job training analysis that can be modified to suit individual mine conditions, machinery and work procedures.
