By Avalon Barclay

THE Commission of Inquiry into the death of Keon Wilson, which occurred in a mining pit accident at Whitewater Backdam in the Puruni mining district of Region Seven last month, continued on Monday, and quite a few surprises emerged.One of those surprises came after the break yesterday, the second day of the hearing, when Senior Mining Engineer Dharampaul Chandan of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) declared: “Diaries are sometimes submitted via electronic copies. It was submitted so that information for the third quarter can be registered. The diary was done in a tabular format.”

Chandan’s statement was in response to a query from the Commission’s head, former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and Presidential Adviser on the Environment, Rear Admiral (rtd) Gary Best, who wanted to know why he had been given an electronic copy rather than a hard copy of a certain document; and Chandan’s comment clearly took Best by surprise.

Best responded: “I’m astounded to know that there is a part of the GGMC that allows the flow of electronic documents from one officer to another, since the information can be tampered with when in the hands of the supervisor.”

The question at reference had to do in part with how Chandan, as the officer responsible for the area in which the accident occurred, had come to learn of the accident that claimed the life of the 33-year-old Wilson.

Chandan replied that while he was not on site at the time of the accident, he was informed of it by Eventon Daly, Wilson’s boss, who told him that a mining pit had collapsed in the Puruni mining district.

The other surprise occurred earlier in the day, when the Acting Commissioner of the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission, Mr. Newell Dennison, told the Commission, inter alia, that other than a cease-work order (CWO) which has since been issued for the site where the accident occurred, no other measures have been put in place to preserve the integrity of the area for investigation purposes.

“The area is not preserved using tapes or by any sign, but persons are not allowed to work on the site because of the CWO,” Dennison replied when the question was put to him by Commissioner Best.

Pressed into saying what he thinks is happening at the site right now, Dennison replied: “No GGMC work is currently in progress, and the area should remain the way the officers left it.”

Asked next why someone had not been physically posted at the site to preserve its integrity until the investigations were completed, Dennison replied that that was not necessary; as the GGMC, like the police, had in its possession documents to substantiate what had occurred at the site at the time of the accident.

He, however, added, “There are photos of the accident which we at GGMC are preserving as a form of evidence.”

Commissioner Best then revealed that the post-mortem done on the body of Wilson showed that he died of asphyxiation, a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body, which arises from abnormal breathing.

Best, in closing yesterday’s hearing, noted that the storage of data is very important; and that if data is being sent around via electronic medium, avenues for tampering are inevitably created.

Noting that “the heart of Man is desperately wicked,” Best said that when the hearing resumes, he would like to receive from the GGMC copies of the field books, check lists, and diaries of the mining officers who had been in charge of the area at the time of the accident.