The death toll from the col­lapse of an il­le­gal gold mine at Rosebel, one of South Amer­i­ca’s largest open-pit gold projects, climbed to 14 on Tues­day af­ter more bod­ies were re­cov­ered from the fa­cil­i­ty.

On Mon­day evening, Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi had in­formed the Na­tion­al as­sem­bly that 10 bod­ies had been pulled from the mine fol­low­ing the ac­ci­dent, which oc­curred at 3.00 pm (lo­cal time) and that the tem­po­rary con­struct­ed tun­nel “with a con­sid­er­able depth” had buried a num­ber of gold min­ers.

“As a gov­ern­ment, we are shocked and of­fer our con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives,” San­tokhi said, adding that the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing de­clar­ing a day or more days of na­tion­al mourn­ing.

San­tokhi said the ac­ci­dent hap­pened in the gold con­ces­sion of the Chi­nese-owned Zi­jing Min­ing, which ac­quired Rosebel Gold­mines from IamGold ear­li­er this year. Rosebel is one of South Amer­i­ca’s largest open-pit gold projects. But that the pres­ence of il­le­gal gold min­ers is said to have cre­at­ed an un­safe sit­u­a­tion in the area.

San­tokhi said that at the re­quest of Zi­jing Min­ing, a large num­ber of il­le­gal gold dig­gers were re­moved by the po­lice and army a few weeks ago from the place where a large gold vein had been dis­cov­ered.

How­ev­er, the group of il­le­gal min­ers re­port­ed­ly re­turned af­ter a few days.

Po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers as well as mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­ter have been dis­patched to the area to pro­vide as­sis­tance. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion team led by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has been ap­point­ed to probe the in­ci­dent.

The au­thor­i­ties say that if it be­comes nec­es­sary, Suri­name will re­quest as­sis­tance from Brazil in the res­cue op­er­a­tion.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Nov 21, CMC – 

CMC/af/ir/2023