By Ariana Gordon

THE death of Trenton Sebastian, 19, of Kurukubaru, Region Eight, who died in a pit in Mahdia on March 14, 2016 as a result of a mine collapse at Konawak, Mahdia, occurred due to the “absence of controls to make the mine-face safe.”According to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report into the collapse of the mining pit at Konawak, Mahdia and the death of Sebastian — done by Major General (Retired) Joseph Singh — the six-inch dredge owned by Sherwin Grenada was operating without the written permission of the Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission.

The dredge was being operated on a Prospecting Permit Medium Scale (PPMS) property for which an application was made for it to be transferred to a Mining Permit Medium Scale (MPMS). That application was made by Shellon Luke in January 2010.

Permission was not approved for conversion to a Mining Permit Medium Scale (MPMS) because of the need for map coordinates to be validated on the ground.

“The principal cause of this pit failure accident is that a shortcut was taken to extract ore to a pile in the pit, wash it to the sump and recover gold quickly. The required safety practices with respect to overburden removal and proper mining bench delineation to isolate the mine face were absent,” the report, submitted to Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Raphael Trotman, on March 21, stated.

Sebastian was killed on the first day of his employment by Grenada as a pitman. The mining pit collapsed at approximately 15:15hrs on March 14, and the falling material buried the 19-year-old alive. His body was recovered some three hours after the collapse.

“This incident and death occurred because of the absence of controls to make the mine-face safe in relation to the miners (jet men and pitmen) washing ore to a sump (marack hole) for pumping into a process box (sluice box),” the report noted.

The mining position at the time of the accident was a high and steep (almost vertical) mine-face of 30 feet, with no bench. The floor of the pit was narrow and very restricted because of fallen trees and vegetation, and there was no proper ingress or egress to or from the mine pit, making it very difficult to safely escape when the collapse occurred, the report stated.

OTHER FACTORS
Other factors also contributed to the mining pit collapse. These include poor mining techniques due to the inexperience of the workers, the lack of training at all levels, lack of technical inputs, and a “chasing gold” mentality.

Sebastian suffered spinal damage caused by the material that buried him for nearly three hours. It was discovered that there was no hydraulic jetting of the wall in the direction of the lead at the time of the sloughing and subsequent collapse of the wall.

The mining pit activities were focused on cleaning out the floor of the pit in preparation for processing of the material from the marack hole to the sluice box.

Two jet men were directing the jets of water away from the wall and towards the marack hole. Sebastian was standing in the pit behind the jet men, and about 15 feet from the toe of the 30-foot-high vertical wall when he observed the collapsing section, shouted an alarm, and sought to get out of the way of the falling material, the report stated.

As such, the men who were facing away from the wall fled in the direction of the dredge, which was positioned outside of the pit. Sebastian, being behind the jet men and nearest to the wall, fled in the direction of a large diameter tree sloping upwards from the pit floor, but he was hit by the falling ‘mud balls’ and other materials.

The CoI found that the mining pit was too narrow, the face of the pit in the direction of the lead was too vertical, the material was too unstable, and the knowledge of the dredge owner Sherwin Grenada, his General Manager Clinton Emptage, the jet men and pit men, was too inadequate to cope with the combination of factors that were cumulatively responsible for the collapse of a section of the pit wall.

Notwithstanding the shortcomings discovered, Singh, in his report, said the actions that followed the collapsing of the section of the wall and the disappearance of the 19-year-old, the attempts to recover Sebastian’s body from under the fallen material “were the best that could have been taken by the dredge owner and his crew in the circumstances”.

Additionally, it was discovered that Curt Chase, a ranger at Mahdia who represents Shellon Luke, oversees the said property for which the PPMS was applied for by Luke. Chase gave an oral approval to Grenada late last year to work on a mining position approximately 100 metres from the pit that collapsed.

Grenada was issued a Cease Work Order (CWO) in February 2016 during an inspection by GGMC’s Mining Engineer, because he could not produce to her any written permission to operate on the said property by the Commissioner of GGMC.
NOT APPROVED
The Mining Engineer found that the application was not approved for the conversion of the PPMS to the MPMS, as it was on hold on February 19, 2010 pending a survey of the Mahdia area.

“This was even more reason why the dredge owner should not have been working on the position,” the report stated. Grenada complied with CWO of February 2016, but approached Chase seeking another position on the said PPMS. This was granted orally.

“Ranger Chase admitted to giving oral approval to the dredge owner Grenada to carry out mining operations on the position for which a CWO was issued in February 2016. He also admitted to giving approval for Grenada to work on the other position where Sebastian met his death. He acknowledged receiving tributes as a percentage of the dredge owner Grenada’s production. He justified his granting of approval to Grenada on the false premise that the annual rental for the PPMS property applied for was paid by Luke, and it was his opinion that he could allow the small-scale dredge operated by Grenada to proceed,” the report added.

However, since the CWO was issued in February, GGMC officials paid no other visit to the site to ensure compliance.

“GGMC engineer indicated that, given the staff’s schedule of visits to other parts of the mining district, and with the limited number available at any time, given the leave rotation, another monitoring visit could not have been done to ensure compliance.”

It was also discovered that the methodology used by dredge owner to create the pit was “seriously flawed” and in breach of GGMC’s regulations. Apart from his hiring of an excavator to make an initial clearing of the forested area to allow hydraulic jetting to commence, the jetting process was utilised to clear additional trees, as evidenced by one large two-foot-diameter tree sloping upwards from the floor of the pit.
“This inherently dangerous operation was rationalised by dredge owner Grenada as a calculated decision to ensure more money went to his crew as a result of clearing by hydraulic jetting rather than by assisted clearing involving the use of the excavator.”

He reportedly paid $10,000 to each crew member on each ounce of gold won by use of the dredge only, as against $3000 payment to each member if an excavator is used to assist the dredge in clearing the trees and overburden in direction of the lead.

This is seen as a contributing factor in the chain of events leading up to the death of Sebastian.

The findings of Singh’s inquiry are similar to those of the August 4, 2015 CoI into several mining pit collapses and deaths of miners, headed by Dr Grantley Waldron. Singh said all of the recommendations of the CoI conducted by Waldron are applicable to the Konawak CoI, and quoted sections of the Waldron Report.

Singh’s report noted the fact that, some eight months after the submission of the report of that CoI, mining pit accidents are still occurring, and the causes are the same.

“The regulatory agency’s Training for Trainers’ programmes and the dissemination of information through the media, though laudable, are not yet impacting on the mining community in the field. Most small miners hardly have access to the media, and visits by mines officers to mining operations are infrequent because of the scale and scope of mining operations within mining districts, and the lax culture (in relation) to safety in Guyana.”

Singh recommended that the findings and recommendations of the CoI as contained in the August 4, 2015 report be the subject of “saturation”, to disseminate these as widely and as quickly as possible at the national, regional and mining district levels.

The strategy, he noted, must be collaborative, consultative, and sustained; and all necessary resources must be employed in the process.
The report pointed to the need for active participation of workers in the management of health and safety initiatives. This, the report noted, needs to be achieved through legislative guidance from GGMC and the Occupational Safety and Health Regulator of the Ministry of Social Protection’s Department of Labour.