Long-standing criticism of the effectiveness of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) in its role as the state oversight agency for the country’s gold-mining sector has been expanded by the conclusions of the recently released four-member investigative report into accidents in the mining sector.
Triggered largely by a recent pit cave in at the Mowasi mining site which resulted in the loss of 10 lives, the report alludes to what it says is the GGMC’s lack of “focus, capacity and/or strategy to ensure that (mining) operations are meeting their legal responsibilities under accepted health and safety laws and guidelines,” barely stopping short of accusing the agency of an abandonment of its responsibilities in the area of safety and health. In cases where serious health and safety transgressions have been occurring in the goldfields, the GGMC has been “looking the other way,” the report says.
As it progressed, the report was increasingly condemnatory of the GGMC, asserting that the state agency “was not focused and has not been doing its work properly…is not aggressive and/or proactive in pursuing its mandate of safety in mining pits…is not aggressive enough in supporting the legitimate activities of its officers” and, accordingly, “may be unwittingly subverting their morale.”
In its slew of criticisms of the GGMC the Report goes on to state that ‘information flow at GGMC and decision-making are not aligned to proper best practices in management” and that in the case of a mining accident there is “no clear protocol for dealing with post-accident issues including a ‘terms of resumption of work’ guideline.”
GGDMA Administrative Coordinator Colin Sparman who was part of the investigating team told Stabroek Business that while the Commission members stood by the findings of the Report and setting aside the importance of implementing and officially monitoring safety rules in the mining sector, “there has to be some measure of self-regulation”. “It is simply impossible for the authorities to completely police the sector twenty four hours a day. A greater measure of self-regulation is needed by the miners themselves.”
Efforts to secure an official comment from the GGMC on the report’s criticisms of the oversight agency have proved futile. The source told Stabroek Business that what the Report has in effect done is to place the ball for remedying many of the critical operational problems in the mining sector squarely in the court of the government. “That is something that Minister (of Governance Raphael) Trotman and his team cannot afford to overlook,” the source said.
