It is not the easiest thing in the world to speak glibly about safety in the gold mining sector in circumstances where most of us who dwell outside of that circle do not know much about the associated risks. We know a great deal less than we need to about the procedures and protocols associated with what one might term safe mining, if indeed such a circumstance does exist.
The proper response to our lack of knowledge is, of course, for the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) to do much more to educate the coastal population on issues pertaining to the mining sector as these relate to the mining process and more particularly to safety. It is a perfectly reasonable proposition for various reasons. First, the now profound economic national significance of gold makes the commodity and issues pertaining to the industry a matter of concern that extends beyond the miners themselves. Second, the continued movement of workers from the coast to the goldfields in search of work makes the sector, it fortunes, its risks and its safety considerations, matters of interest to the country as a whole. Third, the more we all, including the media, know about gold-mining and its safety considerations the better positioned we are to enjoin the discourse about safety in the sector.
Even in our condition of a knowledge deficit, however, we cannot simply allow ourselves to slip into a state of indifference in the face of what has now become the monotonous regularity of miners, men seeking to make a living for their families, being buried beneath tons of earth as a result of these sickeningly repetitive mishaps. Nor is it simply a matter of apportioning blame or passing judgement from a perspective of a lack of knowledge. One is simply wondering aloud as to whether a point has not now been reached where we simply must do what we can to try to draw a line under these tragedies; where more official attention, more technical expertise and more material resources begin to be directed, in earnest, at risk-aversion, risk-management, the stricter enforcement of practices and protocols as well as the penalties for transgression.
Surely it cannot continue to be simply a question of counting our losses in human life or simply ‘balancing’ the body count against the material returns from gold mining. Those calculations can never really cause us to arrive at a realistic measurement of the consequences of a loss of life for those who are left behind.
Nor can we simply allow ourselves to be content with an arrangement that allows for whosoever runs the mining operation to simply stand the cost of affording the victim what we euphemistically term a decent burial and perhaps some further consideration for the bereaved family. That is not enough.
It is not enough because all too often we hear chilling stories of risk calculation. It is the gold, we hear, that pushes the men who make the decisions in the direction of those macabre calculations, so that the risk persists. And sometimes the calculations don’t quite work out. Does it boil down simply to a matter of some of us being more expendable?
Perhaps it is in the very nature of gold-mining that tragedies will occur, though, frankly, that is hardly the point. The real issue has to do with whether or not the sector is doing everything in its power to protect the men who take the risks or whether, in far too many instances, the dynamic has not been reduced to a repetitive cycle of risk-taking in circumstances where we are simply lacking in both the tools or the know-how to take an even remotely informed risk. Men simply die and the show does on.
Much of what we have learnt about the gold-mining sector in recent years, points in the direction of a few realities. First, there is the significant increase in the role of gold as an employer of Guyanese. Second, there is the growing extent of its contribution to the Guyana economy. Third, there are the environmental consequences of intensified gold-mining as well as the mounting challenge of exerting any sort of strong official control over the gold-bearing areas of the country. Pockets of lawlessness that include violence, gun-running, drug use, drug trafficking and trafficking in persons persist.
There is too, as far as has been reported, instances of far less sensitivity to safety in the risk measurement practices in the gold-mining sector. In the final analysis the buck – as far as rigidly enforcing the safety-related rules are concerned – stops with the state-designated agencies and the challenges associated with enforcement are no excuse for the succession of tragedies that we must endure.
