THE Ministry of Labour has mounted an investigation into the death of 23-year-old Wayne Benjamin, who, two Sundays ago, perished when a gold mining pit in which he was working at Winiperu caved in, tumbling and pinning him some 30 feet below.
The Ministry is further working on the theory that Benjamin’s death may have been caused through negligence and failure on the part of the mining company to observe due safety practice procedure at the work site.
Chief Labour Officer Yogenandand Persaud yesterday told the Guyana Chronicle that preliminary investigations revealed that at the time of the disaster, an excavator was being operated a short distance away from the mining pit in which Benjamin was working, and that the vibrations may have led to the mud crumbling and pinning him to his death.
Persaud said that a team of officers would be at the location soonest to conduct further investigations.
A post mortem performed on the deceased last Friday, just hours before his burial, at Friendship, next to his homestead, Vigilance, revealed that he died of drowning. Understandably so, workmates agreed, pointing out that the pit contained a large amount of sand and water, to which the crumbling mud was added. They claimed that after the incident, suction hoses had to be employed to help pump the water out of the pit to assist rescue workers in their search for him.
The Ministry is also contending that the manner in which the pit was dug was contrary to specifications when digging for such purposes – being done cylindrically instead of cone-shaped.
The Chief Labour Officer lamented the fact that too many fatalities are being witnessed at workplaces due to employers not following safety practice procedures.
He recalled that earlier this year, there was another incident of two gold miners being killed when mud from the walls of a mining pit buried them some 50 feet below.  The accident took place on March 2, when  Rohan Hibbeizi 35, a Jamaican also known as Jamakey of Long Creek East Bank Demerara, and Karran Roopnarine, 32, of Triumph, East Coast Demerara,  were both killed as a result of the mishap.  “This should never have been,” he noted, adding that even one such fatality is too many.
The Ministry will be taking steps to ‘up the ante’ so as to ensure stricter compliance with Labour laws and occupational health and safety procedures, he said.
Meanwhile, another observation made was that there are many instances in which industrial deaths take place and employers either do not report, or take a very long time before reporting such deaths to the Ministry.   In the case of Benjamin’s death, the matter was not immediately reported, even though there is a reliable telecommunication link between Mahdia and Georgetown.
Benjamin reportedly died around 17:30 hrs on Sunday, but his remains did not arrive in Georgetown until Wednesday, by which time it was, according to his elder brother, Carlet, ‘badly decomposed’ .
Relatives have expressed concern too, that  at no time was work halted at the mining site following the death of the employee, but that excavation continued and it was virtually ‘business as usual’ at the site.  They said they feel the least that could have been done was for the area to have been cordoned off with yellow and persons prevented from entering there, pending the outcome of police investigations.
Six days later, (on the day of the funeral) the contractor with whom Benjamin worked arrived in Georgetown, but pathetically, the Benjamins said, even though he assisted with expenses, he has still not given the family any satisfactory explanation  concerning Wayne’s death, nor did he attend the funeral.
“He visited our home on the night of the wake and on the day of burial, just sent the money with someone, and never showed up at the parlour nor the funeral,” Carlet lamented.
Benjamin had been working with the mining company, said to be owned by a relative, for about the last year.