With the local mining sector now gearing itself to host major overseas investors, the Guyana Geology and Mines Com-mission (GGMC) says that it is working to provide an enabling environment aimed at maximizing the efficiency of the mining sector.
On Tuesday, the Mining School in collaboration with Australian Company Orica Mining Services joined forces to deliver a theoretical re-fresher programme for blasters in the gold mining and quarrying sectors. This newspaper understands that representatives of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force were also involved in the exercise.
At an opening ceremony on Tuesday which was addressed by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, some of the country’s experienced
blasters re-flected on what, this newspaper has learnt, has been nearly four decades of blasting in Guyana. Orica local representative Devindra Kissoon told Stabreok Business that the gathering for this week’s refresher programme was reminiscent of days past in Linden when blasting was an integral part of bauxite mining. Kissoon told Stabroek Business that in those days heavy emphasis was placed on safety and the environment and that the current course was designed to reinforce safety and efficiency as hallmarks of blasting in the country’s mining sector.
“Orica Mining Services and the GGMC have established a safe and efficient blasting course designed to refresh the skills of existing blasters who are already working in Guyana,” Kissoon told Stabroek Business.
He said that the course was being attended by more than 82 participants and that it had been initiated “out of the desire of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, the GGMC, local quarrying companies and two expatriate gold mining companies, Guyana Goldfields and Troy Resources.
A source at the GGMC has told Stabroek Business that the advent of the blasting forum may “perhaps” offer clues to “a timeline for the commencement of gold mining operations” by Guyana Goldfields and Troy Resources though he could not say “for sure” that this was the case.
Orica Mining Services, formerly operated in Guyana under the trading name Atlas/ICI and has been providing services to the local mining industry for more than forty-six years. Kissoon said that Orica had “carefully developed a practice of safe and efficient blasting in Guyana.” He said that Guymine had operated a bauxite mine “adjoining the residential town of Linden” and that blasting frequently took place in that area. Kissoon who says he spent part of his life in Linden told Stabroek Business that blasting took place regularly. He said that arising out of this regime of blasting Guyana adopted international best practices “in order to ensure the surrounding residents remained unaffected by the mining activities at Guymine.” He said that those best practices had since been modernized and updated and shared with the local mining community in order to ensure that all mining that requires the use of explosives is conducted in an environmentally and socially friendly manner.
Orica’s Head of Technical Services Juan Padro told Stabroek Business that more than 90 per cent of the company’s work “is about safety and health. “We cannot and do not work in an environment in which issues of safety, health and the environment may arise”, Padro told Stabroek Business adding that there are strict procedural and safety protocols associated with handing over explosives.
Mining School Head, John Applewhite-Hercules said that the GGMC was persuaded of the value of the course given the focus of the mining sector.
