Cardinal Namdini Mining Ltd, a subsidiary of Shandong Gold Mining Company Ltd operating in the Talensi district, was hit by a tragedy and protests at the weekend.
The Chinese company’s bus, carrying 22 mineworkers to its site, flipped over twice in the early hours of Saturday in the district.
Authorities of the Upper East Regional Hospital said 3 of the 22 victims were in critical condition and referred to the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH).
“Another three were having skeletal fractures and were also referred to Ultima Platz Hospital in Zuarungu,” the hospital’s clinical coordinator, Dr Samuel Aborah, told Media Without Borders on Sunday.
“The rest of the victims had minor injuries and were treated as outpatients,” he added.
Unconfirmed reports say one of the mineworkers died on the day of the crash and was buried on Sunday.
The cause of the accident is not yet established. Eyewitnesses say it occurred close to the site.
Tempers at hospital
Families and friends gathered outside the hospital’s emergency unit, anxiously waiting for updates, as doctors and nurses attended to the patients behind closed doors.
Many of the relatives and well-wishers made their way to the hospital on motorbikes.
Tempers flared outside when security officers assigned to keep watch over visitors’ vehicles at the hospital began to lock the motorbikes with padlocks and chains because they were not well parked.
A chunk of the already-tense crowd, angry that the officers were adding more to their grief, mobbed a young man holding the keys to the padlocks.
They seized the keys from him, unlocked the motorbikes and dumped the chains in nearby dustbins. The development was close to a physical assault.
Two ambulances stood in front of the emergency unit, waiting to convey some of the victims to Tamale, the Northern region’s capital.
The wait outside the emergency unit took so long. Tired of hanging around, some young men attempted to force their way into the emergency wards.
Their attempt was met with instant resistance from some guards stationed at the main doors to that unit. The young men were determined, trying to thrust their way through the twin doors while the guards pushed the doors back.
But they eventually pulled back from the struggle after some older men, for whom they seemed to have a lot of respect, stepped out from the visiting crowd and forbade them from engaging in that scuffle.
Demonstration in Talensi
While the victims were on admission, their workmates staged a demonstration in Talensi.
The demonstrating workers said Saturday’s crash was not the first such incident to have happened to workers while travelling on the company’s buses to the mining site.
That weekend demonstration also was not the first to have erupted at the company’s site. On Wednesday, 13 March 2024, many of its indigenous (Ghanaian) employees waged a strong demonstration over what they described as poor and harsh working conditions.
They said the smoking allowances paid to their Chinese counterparts at the same site were higher than the wages they (the Ghanaian workers) received.
According to them, the Ghanaian skilled workers were paid a daily wage of Gh¢80 and Gh¢10 for feeding per day. They further stated that unskilled Ghanaian employees received a wage of Gh¢70 per day while the Chinese workers got Gh¢950 each per day for the same labour and a cigarette smoking allowance of Gh¢80 a day.
The company’s authorities declined to comment on the allegations when this media outlet reached out to them on March 14, 2024.
They did not respond when contacted for comment on the latest development.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org
