Government initially closed a shaft to deprive undocumented miners it called ‘criminal’ of food, water and medicine.

Dozens of local volunteers have stepped up to help rescue what could be thousands of miners feared trapped underground in an abandoned gold mine in the town of Stilfontein in South Africa.

Local campaigners say as many as 4,000 miners entered the gold mine in the town in North West province, and some are feared to now be physically too frail to exit the mine. Some of the miners had initially refused to come up because they were working illegally and were concerned about arrest or possible deportation.

Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa, reporting from outside the mine, where the relatives and family members of the miners have been waiting, said on Saturday that the local community is frustrated and says not much seems to be done to rescue them.

The authorities earlier closed the entrance shaft of the mine, saying the move aimed to “smoke out” the miners in an operation called Close the Hole amid efforts to clamp down on the use of the mines without government permits.

“We are not sending help to criminals. Criminals are not to be helped,” said Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in the presidency, on Wednesday.

But the government changed its approach on Friday and announced it has put together a team, including mine rescue experts, to draw up a plan to bring the trapped people back to the surface.

The Stilfontein gold mine is more than 2,500 metres (8,200 feet) deep. At such depths, temperatures can reach dangerously high levels, often exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122F), and oxygen levels can be extremely low.

Toxic gases such as methane and carbon monoxide are common in abandoned mines, posing severe health risks. Any rescue operations are likely to be hampered by the mine’s narrow and unstable tunnels that require advanced equipment and expert teams.

“We’ve seen in the past few hours volunteers with the community who have come here with ropes and harnesses. They are being made to sign indemnity forms by the police, meaning they cannot blame the authorities if they get hurt,” Al Jazeera’s Mutasa said.

Thembile Botman, a community leader, said the authorities did not do their due diligence in checking how many people were underground and how they could be rescued when they closed the shaft to the mine.

“If you just close it, for me, it means just burying whoever is underground,” he told Al Jazeera.

Botman said some of the people who have surfaced from the mine told the volunteers that they were there for varying periods, with one saying he had been working at the illegal mine for two and a half years.

The supply of essentials, including food and medicine, was cut off by the government for months, he said.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, who visited the site of the disused mine on Friday, maintained the miners were committing a crime, but that a quick recovery process was needed “because it is risky and dangerous for them to remain where they are for a longer period”.

Locals were driven to the mine because of the high rate of unemployment in the area, according to Botman, and because the other operations would hire workers from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other places instead of locals because of lower costs.