A 45-year-old miner died on Tuesday after the excavator he was working on toppled and submerged him in a pond at the Omai mines in Region Eight.
The dead man has been identified as Ricky Hughes of Lot 90 Glasgow Village, East Berbice, Corentyne.
In a release on Wednesday the Ministry of Natural Resources 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.”
A relative of Hughes told this newspaper yesterday that they heard that the excavator operator who has been working in the interior for the past 7 years was carrying out his normal work when the dam caved in. “We heard that he was working on the dam and whilst working the excavator fall in a pit. Probably the weight from the excavator make it give up,” the relative said.
According to the woman, when the miner was pulled from the water, he was still alive. “He still had a little life. They felt a pulse. They had to get helicopter from town to send it in the interior to air-dash him out from there but unfortunately he died on arrival at the Ogle Airport,” the relative said.
Meantime, she added that Hughes’ employer has been very supportive in the matter. “He was with us right through from yesterday (Wednesday), the woman said.
This is 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 deaths.
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” and inevitably leads to accidents where the main cause is negligence.
