38-year-old Trayon Hastings of Kamarang Landing and his employee Rocky Norton are now dead after the mining pit in which they were working at Moonlight Backdam, Kamarang, Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) collapsed on Wednesday evening at about 22:30h. 
Based on reports received, Hastings owned a six-inch land dredge mining operation at Moonlight Backdam, and Rocky Norton was employed with him. On Wednesday, Hastings and Norton were working alone in the mining pit when a 37-year-old miner who was in another camp close by observed the mining pit caving in and raised an alarm.
A search party was immediately organized, and with the assistance of two excavators, the motionless bodies of the two men were finally retrieved at about 00:30h and 01:20h respectively on Thursday.
Hastings reportedly sustained injuries to his abdomen and head, while Norton was observed to have injuries to his right-side ear.
The bodies were taken to the Kamarang District Hospital, where the men were pronounced dead. The bodies will be transported to Georgetown to facilitate a post-mortem. The Police are continuing their investigations.
Less than two months ago, 28-year-old Oniel Richardson, a miner of Goshen village, Bartica, Essequibo River, Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), was killed after the mining pit in which he was working collapsed at Quartzstone Backdam.
It was reported that on the day in question, the now dead man’s cousin and an associate made checks for him but only found his partially buried detector. Richardson was nowhere in sight. He was reportedly self-employed as a detector in search of gold.
“Suspecting the worst, the began digging, and later found the motionless body of the victim beneath a heap of loam. The body was removed and the Police were notified,” the Police had stated.
However, upon arriving at the scene, the man’s body was seen lying above an old dug-out pit next to a wall of sand that appeared to have collapsed.
Meanwhile, only recently, the Ministry of Labour’s Occupational Safety and Health Department launched an investigation into two fatalities that occurred recently in Region One and Region Ten respectively.
Twenty-six-year-old Leroy Sandy, a pork knocker, was fatally injured by a falling tree limb on Monday, July 17, at 42 Miles Backdam, North West District. And on that same Monday, Rodwell Peters died after being pinned under the vehicle he was driving, when it turned turtle on the Ituni Trail.
Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton continues to emphasize the need for employers to ensure that safe and healthy working environments are provided for all workers, irrespective of the type of industry in which they are engaged, and that these work-related deaths are unacceptable.
He further states that his Ministry, through its OSH Department, is continuing to address unsafe workplace conditions and unsafe work practices through inspections and audits in order to reduce the number of accidents that occur in the formal and informal sectors.
