The gold price has soared over the years and as a consequence mining contributes a huge chunk to the country’s economy, yet it remains one of the most vulnerable sectors as not a week goes by without a miner being murdered or dying in an accident. It is this which has caused President of the Guyana Women’s Miners Organisation (GWMO) Simona Broomes to push for better security and medical facilities in the mining sector.
“For me I see a man or woman in the mining sector like stray dog that could be hit by any careless driver at any time without looking back… that is my whole view of it, and they are just left to die with no one caring,” Broomes told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
She has held this view since she was a child living in the Potaro River with her mother, who operated a shop, and one of her customers was an old man who lived on an island by himself. He died one day and Broomes said even though the police and a daughter were contacted no one turned up.
“We called his daughter and one day passed, two days passed, three days passed and nobody coming for him, and I am there as a young girl crying because it was the first time I experienced something like that and he locked in the building and he swell really big because nobody wanted to bury him before the police come,” Broomes recalled. Eventually the stench of his rotting body became unbearable and men in the area dug a shallow grave and buried him.
“Our shop stayed there for about ten years after that, and nobody ever came; that man died and no one cared, and that is why I likened miners to a stray dog at times because a stray dog never have no one looking for them,” a reflective Broomes said.
She said while she knows that the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA), which has been around for about three decades, has been fighting for more security in the mining sector for many years, her organisation wants to add its voice.
“The GGDMA has always at any forum I have gone to made a big thing about security, and when I sat on the Special Land Use Committee set up by the then president, Bharrat Jagdeo the GGDMA had a security plan for the mining sector which they submitted to that committee,” Broomes noted. This she said was done because the association recognized that many of the murders in the interior remain unsolved.
“Mining is a sector completely neglected with everything – security, medical facilities, you name it,” Broomes told the Sunday Stabroek.
Personal
For Broomes it is also a personal struggle, as among other things, she has lost loved ones and friends to murder. On Old Year’s Night 1993 her then reputed husband Gregory Mitchell was brutally shot and killed at 14 Miles, Region 7 as he laid in bed waiting for midnight to wish his workers a Happy New Year.
“It is a pain that doesn’t go away,” Broomes, who was in Bartica at the time, said sadly.
Mitchell was executed, Broomes said, revealing that the workers told her that two men, one armed with a cutlass and the other with a gun, walked into the camp and approached Mitchell in bed and the one with the gun shot him. He got up and ran and he was shot again and when they were satisfied he was dead the men walked out of the camp leaving the workers unhurt.
“He just died like his life had no meaning; nobody cared there was no proper investigation… they just say he get murdered and that was that, and up today the same pattern continues,” Broomes said.
She called for the Guyana Police Force to be better equipped to respond to crimes committed in the interior. Too often, she noted, members of the force have to depend on others to provide transportation to go into the backdam. Further, members of the force are not familiar with the various locations and have to depend on the knowledge of other people, and by the time all of this is happening it is too late to render proper assistance.
She said while her organisation’s main aim is to fight for the rights of women and girls in the interior, Broomes observed that the male miners are just as vulnerable as they are when it comes to health and security. Not a week goes by, she noted, without a miner being murdered or being injured in the country’s vast mining areas, and while most of the cases involve men the organisation’s president said the ripple effects of the tragedy affect women and children as well.
“In most cases these men die and leave wife and children, and they are most times the breadwinners…” she said.
“I want to know how many miners have to continue dying, how many children have to be left without fathers, how many wives have to be left with husbands before people understand that we miners are real people and hard working people?” Broomes asked.
She said when the breadwinners die it weakens families, and more hopelessness is created because the mothers have to leave their young children to go out to work, and the children are the ones who suffer the most.
According to Broomes all sectors are represented with a voice, but miners seem to have no one, and the only time miners are addressed is when policies are about to be implemented most of which “make life more difficult for the poorer miners.”
She pointed out that in the whole of the Cuyuni River there is no police or health post after so many years. And there is only one private airstrip in the area and permission has to be granted before it can be used.
Broomes also took issue with the police not issuing wanted bulletins for persons suspected of committing crimes in the interior. She feels that the photographs of those persons should be in all the outposts in the interior so that miners could know of them. When this is not done Broomes said, the perpetrators just move from one mining camp to another and the owners are none the wiser.
“Why should they kill these people and just get away and live an easy life?” Broomes asked.
Medical risks
To highlight the medical risks miners are forced to face in the interior Broomes gave the example of Ryan Bristol who was burnt in his hammock in Mahdia. It took three days to get him to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) for treatment and tragically he died hours after arrival there. Broomes noted that the perpetrator of the crime was charged even before the young man received treatment. Reports are, according to Broomes, that the young man could not get a flight earlier because some persons refused to come off the plane.
“It shouldn’t be a choice if somebody wants to come off a plane when it involves someone’s life; the hospital should have a chartered aircraft to take him out or make arrangement or demand persons from the aircraft make space for him,” Broomes insisted.
The president of the GMWO called for better health facilities in the interior, as miners are also involved in many accidents and they die because no proper medical attention is available.
“We are vulnerable, we are contributing, we are Guyanese and I want to say it is our fate got us into mining. Mining gold is not the government or the GGMC or anybody giving us this gold… we are going out there to work for it, to pay tax and royalty, and to hold up the economy of this country…” Broomes said.
She said instead miners are only shown in a bad light as people who are destroying the environment.
