JOINT Services ranks were on Monday dispatched to the Five Star backdam in the North West District following a robbery on Sunday afternoon.

Reports from the area are that a group of armed men, suspected to be Venezuelans, invaded a mining camp on Sunday afternoon at Five Star.

Divisional Commander, Rabindranath Budhram, told the Guyana Chronicle that one person sustained a gunshot wound to the leg. Reports are that 18-year old Troy Joseph of the Falls Top mining area, located between Port Kaituma and Matthews Ridge was shot and the man was taken the Matthews Ridge Hospital for treatment.

There have been several incidents involving suspected Venezuelan gunmen committing robberies close to the mining areas at the border. In July this year, three Port Kaituma, North West District miners met a brutal end following a robbery at a mining camp on Venezuela’s side of the border.

The men, Vernon Eudoxie, 63, Cologne Solomon, 23, an ex-policeman and Samuel Moses, 19, were killed during the incident at a Brazilian-owned mining camp at an area known as “Imatake Backdam” across the Venezuela border. Another man, Joel Paton, 19, of Supenaam, was injured and was treated at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), after being transferred from the Port Kaituma Hospital.

Miners in the area told this newspaper that there are groups of Venezuelans known as “sindicatos” of “malandros” who would “control” mining areas in that country’s side of the border. The miners are made to pay a percentage of their mining earnings to the groups.