At least five small scale miners have been confirmed dead at Gbane mining site in the Talensi district of the Upper East Region.
The five met their untimely death when they were mining underground for gold ore.
They were trapped by a smoke alleged to have come from one of the shafts of a Chinese company, Shanxii mining company.
Five of the miners died on the spot, while two of them were sent to the Tamale Teaching Hospital for treatment.
Citi News gathered that, Appiah Kwesi, a concession owner on Friday 7th April, 2017, deployed some miners to mine for gold ore in a mining pit, but while mining, they were trapped with smoke leading to their death.
Narrating the situation to Citi News, Administrator of the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital, Zakaria Yakubu, said “a total of eleven affected miners were brought to the hospital, but 4 died there, and 5 were referred to the Tamale Teaching Hospital, but one died on the way to the hospital. Meanwhile 2 were treated and discharged at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital. For now, preliminary cause of death is that, they died through asphyxia, but we will have to do an autopsy to ascertain the real cause of death.”
The Public Relations Officer of Shanxii Mining Company Limited, Maxwell Wooma, said it was wrong to link his company to the deaths.
“…To say that there was some smoke or explosives that emitted from the Shanxii mining company, which they inhaled and died, that is unfortunate. Our own (Shanxii mining company) go down to blast and come out safely, then our own workers will go down to clean the rock and come out safely, so it is people who were rather not in these working phases of our underground mining who died. They are illegal miners, where were they working, are they licensed to mine and what were they using mine,” Mr. Wooma added.
Meanwhile, the Upper East Regional Police Commander, DCOP Redeemer Vincent Dedjoe, who declined commenting on the matter when contacted, said they have commenced investigations into the matter to establish the real facts of the case.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
