Miners’ Housing to Be Improved

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The country’s biggest mining consortium today embarked on a new housing plan to ease the much-criticized migrant-labor system in which many miners now live in drab, single-sex hostels and see their families only once a year.

Anglo American Corp., which employs 180,000 men in its gold mines alone, said it will build 24,000 low-cost homes in townships spanning the rich gold reef running between Transvaal and Orange Free State provinces.