While “gross negligence” has been found at the mining operation at Aranka, Cuyuni, where three persons died in a mining pit cave-in earlier this month, there is no one to hold responsible as the operator was among the dead.
“The information I received was that the employer, he was [a] casualty himself, hence who is responsible,” Chief Labour Officer Charles Ogle said yesterday, when asked who would be held culpable for the accidents and the death of the men.
According to Ogle, had the man been alive, he would have been held responsible. He also said there are currently cases before the courts involving owners of mining operations where persons might have been killed or injured. He said there are other cases where persons received compensation as relatives of the dead or the injured decided to settle outside of court.
Ogle was at the time addressing members of the media yesterday, following the handing over of the report of an investigation conducted into the Aranka cave-in to Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Robert Persaud at his office, in the Office of the President compound. The investigation was conducted by the Ministry of Labour, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA).
On October 3rd, Devon Barry, 22, of Lot 22 Two Friends, Ann’s Grove, Deonarine Singh, 25, of Lot 17 Ann’s Grove, and Elson Singh, 47, of Lot 1, Two Friends, were all killed when the mining pit caved in. A fourth miner, Robert Adams, who was in the pit at the time, was saved.
Yesterday a relative of the elder Singh confirmed that he was indeed the owner of the operation and that he had been employing persons for the past 10 years.
Persaud, upon receiving the report, said that the recommendations in it would be studied expeditiously and areas where immediate implementation is called for would be addressed.
According to Colin Sparman, of the GGDMA, when they visited the area most of the persons that were involved in the accident had left. “From my observation, the operations were in an area that is very unstable… the material was very unconsolidated,” he said, noting that there were two dredges operating at the location and the situation was aggravated as more water was being added.
“In summary, I would say it was gross negligence on behalf of the operators that caused these events,” Sparman added.
Asked what the GGDMA does to help to enlighten miners about safety regulations, Sparman said there are sensitisation outreaches but pointed out that incidents such as the one where the three miners died happened at itinerant mining operations. He added that such incidents would happen “very rarely” at established operations.
Recommendations
Meanwhile, Ogle said there are ten recommendations coming out of the Ministry of Labour that are included in the report.
“It is our view that the miners did not adhere to the mining, I don’t want to say regulation, but the operations, the way how you go about with safety and health being the priority,” Ogle said.
He said that the mining regulations have been in draft form for several years and they are now close to becoming law and there are plans to visit mining locations and sensitise miners to ensure that they are aware of the occupation, health and safety requirements.
And Deputy Commis-sioner of the GGMC Rickford Vieira said that there were several groups working in one area with unconsolidated material, which is prone to failure during rainy weather and the normal safety precautions were not adhered to. “However, they were working with the permission with the owner of the concession and although we try to prevent persons from working in this manner, safety is the responsibility of everybody,” Vieira said.
According to him, the area was visited about two weeks before the accident and at that point of time “everything was okay in line with what was required” but over the period before the accident the miners dug deeper into the ground, making it unsafe.
He said at the time of the visit, the miners had dug about 10 ft, but when the accident happened they were over 20 ft deep. The officers who visited, according to Vieira, advised the miners that it would have been dangerous if they went much deeper and even showed them areas that were already failing.
He said there have been several similar incidents over the past ten years and he cautioned that everyone has to be responsible for their own actions, since while they are the regulators they “can only do so much.”
Vieira noted that the mining sector is geographically scattered and the GGMC “cannot be all over all the time, so the miners themselves need to be careful in how they operate.” According to him, there are some basic engineering aspects that the miners can get sound advice on from the commission, which offers it free of cost before going into such ventures. “So the miners can always come in and have dialogue with our engineers on how to proceed when they encounter these kind of issues,” he noted.
Meanwhile, Persaud noted that when there is such an occurrence like the cave-in, it is a time to step back and review to see what steps could be out in place to prevent reoccurrence, which is why he immediately decided to mount the “tripartite” investigation. “…[We] also wanted to ensure that we had competent advice as well as including stakeholders in ensuring [at] the end of the day the conclusions we would have arrived at and recommendations would receive [the support] so that we could do as much as we can all working together …,” Persaud said.
The minister added that the issue of monitoring is also important but he agreed with Vieira that it is difficult to monitor all the locations where mining takes place on a day-to-day basis.
“At any one time you have in our country on any day, you have thousands [of] small and medium-scale mining activity taking place and one cannot accurately say that you are able to cover all those on a daily basis.
Therein lies the responsibility of operators themselves and owners managing those operations to follow the guidelines,” he said.
Persaud said that the mining regulations are not insufficient in regards to how operators should mine but added that the focus must be on the issue of occupational, health and safety, for which monitoring should not only be done by the regulatory bodies but also by the miners themselves.
“Every single life is precious and I don’t think any amount of gold or any other mineral can replace the value of life and I want us to bear that in mind,” Persaud said.
