Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton, in response to questions from this newspaper, has confirmed that all workplace accidents investigations had commenced but said that these investigations are at different stages.
“All the accidents, wherever they have happened, we have investigated all of them, and we are at different stages of investigation. Some have been concluded, others have not,” Hamilton said. When asked to provide the outcome of any of the concluded investigations, Hamilton referred this newspaper to the Occupational Safety and Health consultant, Gwenneth King. And when this newspaper turned up at the ministry, it was informed that no authorization was given for this information to be disclosed. As such, any information pertaining to progress status and results of all ministry-led investigations remains unknown.
Hamilton, after he was appointed as Minister of Labour, had announced that he was committed to establishing Regional Occupational Health and Safety and Labour offices across Guyana. A review of workplace accidents for the period 2018 to 2020 indicates that one major contributory pillar has been the absence of, or violations of the Ministry’s Occupational Health and Safety Guidelines. Between 2018 and 2019, Stabroek News reported that at least eighteen persons had lost their lives as a result of workplace accidents across the country. Based on reports carried in this newspaper, of the 18 work-related deaths, the mining sector recorded the highest number of workplace deaths, which is nine or half of the total number of deaths at the workplace. Deaths and injuries to workers providing services to the utilities sector followed. Between 2018 and 2019 several workers who were employed by contractors to execute jobs for government agencies and utility companies perished in worksite-related accidents.
In November 2020, the Ministry of Labour’s Occupational Health and Safety Unit sanctioned local firm, Ramotar and Sons Contracting, after the company recorded at least one death and a serious work-related accident between 2018 and 2019. King [the OHSU’s consultant] said after investigations were completed, the Unit found the contractor to be in violation of Occupational Health and Safety guidelines. The company was sanctioned and mandated to implement safer working conditions for employees. She did not disclose what measures the company was required to institutionalise.
This newspaper reported that in 2019, Andrea Fullerton, 21, of 155 Patrick Dam, Angoy’s Avenue, New Amsterdam, Berbice, died after coming into contact with a live wire. At the time he was working with a contracting firm on a maintenance project for the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL). And in 2018, another employee, Asif Azeez, was electrocuted after he too came into contact with a live wire while installing street lights at Dryshore, Essequibo Coast. Another man, Orwayne Cozier, 24, of Lot 30 Dowding Street, Kitty, Georgetown, died after he too was electrocuted in the same incident. Cozier, who was employed with the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, was speaking with Azeez, who was employed with Ramotar and Sons Contracting firm — which was tasked with running overhead power cables — when the mishap occurred. Vibert Balgobin, one of the contracting firm’s employees, was on a utility pole running the cables across several poles. As he was doing so, Cozier and Azeez were on the ground assisting with handling the spool rack that was feeding the wire to Balgobin. But that is only a small amount of the numerous investigations that are yet to be concluded.
Meanwhile, in the aviation sector at least five accidents occurred during the same period. Two of the five accidents were fatal, claiming the lives of Captain Randy Liverpool and Nigel Rodrigues. Liverpool perished when his aircraft went down as he was 5 minutes away from landing at the Eteringbang airstrip, and Rodrigues died when, according to reports, being under the influence of alcohol, he walked into a Cessna Grand Caravan’s propeller on the Kamarang runway.
In the marine sector, a 30-year-old Philippines national was crushed to death during an incident at a city wharf. There were at least five construction-related accidents reported over the two years. In 2021, two workplace deaths were reported. Royston Souvenir, 49, of Canal No. One Polder, West Bank Demerara (WBD), died on February 1, 2021, after he was pinned by an excavator at the Guyana Shore Base Inc. compound, Houston, East Bank Demerara (EBD). He was an employee attached to Gaico Construction and General Services Inc.
Mark Gomes, 32, of Long Pond, Sisters Village, West Bank Demerara, a supervisor at the Edward B Beharry and Company Limited, Mandela Avenue location, died on February 2, 2021, in a worksite accident involving a pressurized air hose. Gomes was supervising the transfer of flour from a pressure tank mounted on a truck to a silo. It was reported that he climbed onto the back of the truck to investigate a sound when the hose connecting to the tank and the silo became disconnected causing the cover to hit Gomes in the face, knocking him to the ground. Gomes was taken to the Woodlands Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
