THE accident in which a teenager lost his life at Tumatumari, in Region Eight (Potaro/Siparuni), on Wednesday last, is another direct result of the
lack of adherence to regulations concerning open pits for gold mining, a knowledgeable source, close to the industry, said yesterday.
The person, who prefers anonymity, said the slope failure which took the life of Michael Ricardo Prince was sixty feet deep, a depth at least
twenty feet deeper than what the regulations permit.
The fatality occurred when the victim was operating a
hydraulic hose at the bottom of the pit and the walls collapsed.
Two miners died in similar circumstances at a White Hole
mine in Mahdia on March 2.
Rohan Hibbeizt, a 35-year-old Jamaican called ‘Jamakey’, of Long Creek, Soesdyke/Linden Highway and 32-year-old Karran Roopnarine, of Triumph, East Coast Demerara, were buried alive while working at the bottom of a pit.
Prince was the third miner to die as a result of pit slope failure in
less than two weeks in Potaro Mining District number two.
The lamenting source admonished both miners and the regulatory agencies to ensure adherence to the basic safety rules in open pit mining.
He emphasised that wet or water-saturated overburden slumps easily and
advised miners that, to avoid slumping, they should reduce the steepness
of the pit wall slope as the amount of the overburden increases.
He also recommended that miners:
* make pit faces stable by sloping them at the angle of
repose of the material that is being mined or by using benches;
* should not  allow the undercutting of the working face, this
being an extremely dangerous practice that can quickly cause accidental death by slumped material covering exposed workers;
* should avoid constructing high pit faces;
* should ensure that the jet man (hydraulic monitor operator) is
standing away from the pit face at a distance at least one and a half times the height of the face;
* should always remove or loosen and push down loose rock or soil
on any working face that could create danger to persons, working from the top down, and
* should ensure the stability of any waste material piles or
dumps and isolate unstable ground until it is stabilised.
He said those are some of the basic rules of safety in surface mining, that is hydraulicking or land dredging and excavator assisted operations that should be adhered to by miners and rigidly enforced by Guyana Geology and Mines Commission  (GGMC) or the death toll will
continue to rise.