By Jeff Trotman
A BOSAI apprentice serviceman was crushed to death in the East Montgomery Mine around 8.45 am yesterday.
The sudden gruesome death of Bertram Pollard, who was in his early twenties, was too much for his fellow mine workers and they all left the job.
According to an eyewitness, who was operating a heavy-duty truck in the immediate vicinity of the fatal incident, Pollard was servicing an excavator when the operator of the excavator asked him to cease servicing the equipment because he wanted to take some material to the dump, which was not far away.
The eyewitness said that Pollard walked about ten yards from the excavator and placed the servicing equipment on the ground when another truck, which was idling adjacent to the excavator began to move slowly towards the dump site, hitting Pollard on his left shoulder, causing him to fall into the path of the truck.
He said one of the front wheels of the truck rolled over Pollard.
Noting that the truck was loaded and weighed about 100 tonnes when it rolled over the unfortunate worker, the eyewitness said that the operator of the truck could not see the unfortunate man. Stressing that he “saw everything”, the eyewitness lamented that had his truck been equipped with a radio, he probably could have averted the unfortunate incident by making a quick radio call to the operator of the truck that ran over Pollard.
Three weeks ago, the lifeless body of a BOSAI excavator operator, Edgar Trotman, 45, was found bound with his hands behind his back in a desolate area of the Kara Kara end of the tailings pond of the company’s Linden processing plant.
Police are still investigating Trotman’s death. His body was found not far away from the excavator, he was operating at the time of his death. A vital electronic component was removed from the excavator. The missing component is reportedly valued at close to $2M.
Aggrey Darlington, Secretary of the Linden Branch of NAACIE, the bargaining union on behalf of BOSAI’s workers, told Stabroek News that he is wondering why it is that BOSAI had an apprentice working on his own and doing the work of a full-fledged serviceman. Darlington has also expressed concern at the manner in which the fatal incident occurred. According to him, the incident underlined the issue of poor visibility on certain work sites in the mining areas. He stressed it is a matter that the union has repeatedly raised with management to no avail.
Darlington said the union will also raise the issue of lack of security, especially at night, at several desolate work sites, including the area in which Trotman died.
There was no statement from Chinese-owned BOSAI yesterday on the crushing death.
