Po­lice in Guyana are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of a 70-year-old min­er who re­port­ed­ly was buried alive with the col­lapse of a pit lo­cat­ed along the Pu­runi Riv­er, in the Cuyu­ni-Mazaruni re­gion.

In a state­ment, the po­lice said that Emanuel Jef­frey was op­er­at­ing a four-inch land dredge at the Back­dam, along­side two em­ploy­ees, when the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Tues­day.

“At the time of the in­ci­dent, Mr. Jef­frey and his cowork­ers were en­gaged in min­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in a pit mea­sur­ing 15 feet wide, 10 feet long, and 8 feet deep. Dur­ing their work, the east­ern side of the pit col­lapsed, which led to soil rush­ing in and com­plete­ly bury­ing Mr Jef­frey for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 min­utes,” the state­ment not­ed.

It said his cowork­ers ex­ca­vat­ed the site, and Jef­frey was sub­se­quent­ly trans­port­ed to Bar­ti­ca Hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead.

Ear­li­er this month, Labour Min­is­ter Joseph Hamil­ton ex­pressed con­cern at the in­crease in work-re­lat­ed deaths, pri­mar­i­ly in the min­ing and con­struc­tion sec­tors in 2024.

Hamil­ton told a news con­fer­ence that there had been a 60 per cent in­crease in labour deaths, with a to­tal of 32 be­ing record­ed, and had ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that de­spite all of the mea­sures be­ing tak­en to avoid such deaths, an in­crease had still been re­port­ed in 2024. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)