By Svetlana Marshall

The Ministry of Labour has signalled its intention to intensify Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) training across the country with heavy focus on the Mining and Construction Sectors as persons continue to lose their lives on the job.  

At a press conference today, Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton, disclosed that in 2023, there were 20 fatal workplace accidents, with the majority of the fatalities recorded in the Mining and Construction Sectors.

When compared to 2022, the 2023 figure represents a marginal decline in workplace deaths, moving a single spot down. 

Noting that one death, is one too many, Minister Hamilton said the Labour Ministry intends to bring the number down to zero by intensifying Occupational Health and Safety training, while collaborating with key stakeholders on the issue.

“Someone would ask, what’s the big issue here? The big issue here is that every death is a person, it is not a statistic. It is somebody’s child, husband, father. Some set of people mourning, some set of people having a funeral, and so for me, I don’t treat these as statistics and that is why we are doing everything possible to ensure that this could be reduced to zero. We have established several joint technical committees with partner agencies whether private sector or public sector to help to ensure that this fatality rate decreases,” the Labour Minister said. 

Of the 20 deaths recorded last year, nine (9) were in the Mining Sector with the majority occurring in Region Seven.

Additionally, six (6) of the deaths occurred in the Construction Sector with four of those occurring in Region Four. The other deaths were in the security, logging, vulcanizing, and transportation sectors. 

Given the alarming number of fatal accidents in the mining industry, Minister Hamilton said the Labour Ministry will be partnering with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Gold Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) and the Ministry of Health to develop a special training programme aimed at providing miners with First Aid Training.   

“So, one of the things that…we are working on and we hope to implement this year along with partners is to do some training of a different sort, medical first aid type training in mining areas, and not just mining areas, in the forestry areas, so that you will have somebody on a mining site, or in the camp who have some first aid training,” Minister Hamilton explained. 

However, he said the Labour Ministry cannot do it alone, and called for responsible action across sectors.

“We continue to engage the miners. Our officers, they go there, they take brochures, they have meeting with them, they have training sessions, and all of those things but importantly, is the culture and the attitude. Once the guys, they see the gold thread, they don’t care how the rain falling and the mountain going to collapse, they are going behind the gold. And now, you have another issue that is developed in the mining area where once a place got good gold, when the people are not there working, they have people who come in nighttime and work on the mining camp,” he explained. 

The Labour Minister expressed concern that workers may be silently dying in the Agriculture sector over an extensive period as a result of malpractices, and as such, OSH training will be intensified in that sector as well. 

In the past four years, more than 75 deaths have been recorded in the workplace.

Additionally, 175 non-fatal accidents were investigated in 2023, from a total of 577 reports.

According to the Labour Minister, a majority of the reports emanated from the Agriculture and Manufacturing Sectors. 

Related posts:

More Occupational Safety and Health officers to be trained Worst breaches of occupational health and safety could be found in public sector -says Labour Minister Labour Ministry increases number of Occupational Health and Safety Officers in its employ Broomes to be in charge of Forestry and Mining Sectors’ Occupational Health and Safety as Minister within Ministry of Natural Resources