A miner died on the spot early Thursday morning after the mining pit he was working in caved in around him.
Dead is Mark Benjamin, 39, of Lot 23, Joseph Pollydore Street, Lodge, in the city.
The man’s sister Belinda Jackson told Stabroek News at the family’s home that he was working in a mining concession aback Port Kaituma in the North West District, where the incident occurred. She said that the family received the news of Benjamin’s passing from another relative who is residing at Port Kaituma.
Jackson said that her brother’s neck was broken during the cave-in, which occurred around 7 am on Thursday morning. According to her, his workmates escaped with minor injuries.
Benjamin had been living in the interior community for more than 10 years, his sister noted, but he recently started to working in the mining districts. Jackson stated that her brother would travel out of the community every other year and he was in the process of making preparations to migrate to the United States.
She stated that Benjamin had been a carpenter all his adult life and would usually ply his trade at Port Kaituma.
She said that her brother last spoke to the family on Saturday and during a conversation with his mother he was upbraided about working in the “dangerous” mining areas.
Jackson said that Benjamin had planned to return to the city shortly as he was expected to leave the country sometime in March. She said that the man is a father of three daughters.
Benjamin’s body was brought out to the city yesterday and is currently lying at the Lyken’s Funeral Home in the city.
There have been a number of incidents, some with fatal consequences, in the mining districts across Guyana in recent times. The Labour Ministry recorded over 24 industrial deaths last year, with 13 of them occurring in the mining sector.
On October 27, Charles Anthony Simon, 49, known as ‘Corporal,’ of 111 Miles Mahdia, Potaro Road and of Lot 53, Kendall Street, Golden Grove, East Coast Demerara died on the spot after a tree fell on him while he worked at a mining pit at Mahdia.
Simon and the two workers were working in a pit in the area and as he walked around in the crater a tree located at the top of the pit fell on him.
There was also the incident in which French geologist Guy Rigottier-Gois, a director of River Gold Guyana Inc, died in the Konawaruk Backdam on April 3, 2009. On July 3, 2008, miner Phillip France, 21, of Zeelugt, East Bank Essequibo, died shortly after a sandbank in the Mazaruni area collapsed, burying him in the pit where he had been working. And on October 12, 2009, machine operator Leon Clarke, 59, of Hopetown Village, West Coast Berbice, died at his Mahdia worksite. Police said the man was operating an excavator in a 40-feet deep pit when it caved in and covered him.
In March last year, Karan Roopnarine, 32, of Triumph, East Coast Demerara and Keith Hibbeizt, 32, a Jamaican national who resided at Long Creek, Linden Soesdyke Highway, were both pinned at the bottom of a deep pit after its walls caved in while they worked in a mining pit at While Hole in Mahdia.
The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) have been working to curb such incidents within the mining areas.
