A 19-year-old miner died on Monday afternoon after the mining pit he was working in at Konawaruk, Region Eight caved in and buried him.
He has been identified by officials as Trenton Sebastian, of Kurukubaru, Region Eight.
Stabroek News was reliably informed that the dredge owner, Sherwin Grenada, was given a cease work order on February 16th of this year.
According to reports, Sebastian died around 3.15pm on Monday while he and four other miners were cutting trees through a mine face by using water jets. It was during this process that material fell and pinned him. His body was completely covered in soil and was later retrieved.
Additional information revealed that it was the negligence and unsafe practice by the miners that resulted in the fatality, since the felling of trees using water jets is considered an unsafe practice.
The death comes even though the APNU+AFC administration commissioned an inquiry on mining pit disasters last year and began implementing its recommendations.
Efforts to contact Grenada or the family of Sebastian proved futile.
Minister within the Ministry of Natural Resources Simona Broomes, when contacted for a comment said that is regrettable that yet another life has been taken in a mining accident.
The minister, who had worked in the mining sector for many years, noted that persons cannot make money at the expense of the lives of others. “This government will not stand by and let this continue to happen,” the minister said, before adding that President David Granger is hurt whenever a life is lost and has given clear instructions that policies be developed to prevent the loss of lives in the sector.
“We will not watch on and condone this, we will have strong policies in place and that is why we are creating a compliance division so that we can move swiftly to put an end to facilitate the mining sector,” the minister said.
She revealed that personnel from the division will be out in the fields educating miners to ensure that they take responsibility for the lives of their employees.
The minister expressed condolences to the relatives of the deceased. She noted, “In the same spirit of the sadness, there is motivation and passion to implement policies that will prevent the loss of another life.”
Meanwhile, the Guyana Geology and Mines Com-mission (GGMC), in a statement, said as recent as the second week in February there was a GGMC conducted Mines Safety Compliance Tour in the Potaro and Konawaruk areas. It added that several Cease Work Orders (CWOs) were issued due to unsafe operations in the Mahdia Redhole, Whitehole and St. Elizabeth areas.
GGMC noted that, “the unfortunate occurrence came at a time when GGMC had a wrap-up on March 14, 2016 of a first phase geotechnical engineering training workshop involving some 20 technical officers, who over the past six weeks were exposed to applied aspects of ground structural phenomenon, so that they would be better equipped to objectively identify operational issues that could be hazardous in mining; better tooled to work with miners to effect safer solutions; and more proficient at advocating to miners operational awareness for better technical approaches.”
“Many of those same officers were involved in a Training of Trainers workshop in collaboration with CIRDI /IDB at Linden R&D and in Mahdia where aspects of Occupation Safety and Health were on the table along with mining efficiency and such, also involving mining stakeholders” it added.
The GGMC further said the accident brings to the forefront the continued “casual attitude to safe mines practices” by miners, even after last year’s Mowasi accident, where 10 miners died.
Over the past few years there has been a number of such occurrences in the mining industry, many of which resulted from the failure to follow safe practices and use safety gear.
