At least one person has died as a result of a mining accident in the Omai area, Region Eight.
This is according to a press release from the Ministry of Natural Resources yesterday.
The release said that “while all the facts are still to be determined, reports are that an excavator was trying to lower an engine into a mining pit when it toppled and the operator became submerged resulting in the fatality.”
The identity of this latest fatality is not yet known but he represents the third mining fatality in the last five months.
In May, miner Ramal Williams, 18 years, of 58 Miles, Mabura Road, was working in a mining pit at Konawaruk Backdam, Potaro, when it caved in and he was trapped beneath while in March an inquiry was ordered into an incident where a miner died at Konawak, Mahdia.
That inquiry was the second inquiry launched into a mining death by the APNU+AFC administration which had also convened a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) in June last year following a mining pit collapse at Pepper Creek, Konawaruk in May last year which killed 10 miners.
Meanwhile Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman stated at a Mining Safety Seminar last month that negligence was the number one cause of mining death.
The minister noted that over the past two years, 31 miners lost their lives due to mining pits collapsing.
The profile of these miners is generally a young, inexperienced and eager patriot who feels that there aren’t enough opportunities in the city and turns to the “bush” to define his manhood and become a “self-sufficient and contributing member of society.”
Trotman continued that this creates an industry which is mostly “hinged on a desperation to succeed” and this leads to recklessness.
This, he says, added to an “acute ignorance of the basic aspects of engineering and physics behind the construction of safe mines” inevitably leads to accidents where the main cause is negligence.
