Minister in the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment Simona Broomes says the country’s gold-mining industry cannot afford to relax its insistence on higher all-round standards.
At the top of the pile she tags safety measures. “Not all of the mining operations police themselves properly as far as the safety of the people who work for them is concerned,” she says.
“It is not a matter that the Government of Guyana can afford to take lightly. The situation is not one in which we can stand over every mining operation and enforce good safety practices. We need to find ways of getting to a point where every miner, every owner, every manager places safety at the top of his or her operating priorities. This requires training and sensitization and it requires monitoring. We are not where we ought to be in any of these areas but we have to press forward,” Broomes told Stabroek Business in an extended interview on Tuesday.
Since her move to the Ministry of Natural Resources in January this year, Broomes has been the Government of Guyana’s key point person on safety practices in the mining sector. While she says her own experience as a miner has helped her to develop a greater sensitivity to “issues of safety in the mining sector” she is under no illusions, she says, that she can do it alone. “I can observe some of the dangerous practices and I can make recommendations. Whatever I do, however, has to be supported by compliance from the miners and by enforcement at the level of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC).”
