The entrance of Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited in Talensi, a district in Ghana’s Upper East Region, was the scene of an open protest last Thursday, 13 November 2025.
The afternoon demonstration was staged by several employees of the Chinese mining company, formerly known as Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited.
Two incidents sparked the protest: the death of a colleague named Zuuroug Zong and the sacking of 35 co-workers for going on strike over safety concerns.
Zong, nicknamed Cash, died while on duty, according to the protesting staff, who locked the company’s main gate during the demonstration.
They said he was killed on Wednesday, 22 October 2025, by the smoke of a mining explosive that had been blasted shortly before he was made to go underground.
They further revealed that the company had a strict policy of compelling workers to go underground even when there was still smoke from blasts inside the mine.
“When he passed away, the company claimed he might be having some health issues already and said we shouldn’t say the gas killed him,” said one of the workers. “But we knew the smoke killed him. He died while he was working underground.”
“We always complain to the management about gas in Shaft Three, but they don’t do anything about it,” another employee stated. “When we go underground, we still see smoke.”
Another worker said blast fumes usually should take at least five hours to clear, but employees were made to descend into the mine just two hours after the explosion— and, sometimes, one hour.
“We have been saying they should allow more time for the smoke to go away before we go underground,” he said. “At least, they should allow five hours to pass before we are made to go inside.”
“But we are always told to go into the ground within one or two hours after blasts, while the smoke is still there. We can feel we are dying slowly. It’s like they see gold as more important than our lives,” he added.
Controversial dismissal of 35 workers
After Zong died, many of his colleagues went on strike for four days, demanding safe working conditions in Shaft Three.
They withdrew the strike action after the management reportedly promised to provide more fans to ventilate the shaft.
But when they returned to work, the company’s management identified 35 people as the initiators of the strike and sacked them, according to Media Without Borders sources.
“The head of the company said he could no longer work with them because he did not wrong them before they went on strike,” stated one of the sources.
The dismissed staff left the premises and told the Chief of Gban, Elijah Nab Pardnyuun, about the development. According to a source, the chief invited the company’s management to his palace, but the management claimed it was busy and said it would only respond to the call next Wednesday, November 19, for that reason.
Angered by the alleged statement, a crowd of workers stormed the company’s main gate and locked it.
While the gate remained padlocked, the irate staff declared that the company’s operations would remain shut down unless the dismissed workers were reinstated.
Minutes later, some “soldiers” appeared at the scene, sources say.
The “soldiers” urged the workers to exercise patience, pending the outcome of next Wednesday’s meeting between the chief and the company’s management.
The staff, still angry and united, bought the soldiers’ advice grudgingly. They suspended the demonstration, unlocked the gate and dispersed.
It is unclear who deployed “the soldiers” in question.
The late Zong is survived by his wife and three children. Sources close to his family in Gban said he was 33 years.
Comment from company
The author of this report made efforts on Saturday, November 15, to hear from the company’s public relations unit and the Upper East Regional Hospital, where Zong reportedly was pronounced dead, concerning the developments.
The attempts were made through telephone phone calls, by Short Message Service (SMS) and on WhatsApp.
Those efforts did not yield any comments.
On the morning of Sunday, November 16, this author further contacted the company’s lawyer, Joseph Awakpaksa, notifying him about the failure of the company’s public relations unit to respond to the questions asked the previous day on the latest happenings.
The lawyer said he would get in touch with the officials of that unit.
Despite the lawyer’s word, this media outlet did not receive any response from the unit. Later on the same day, this author wrote a Facebook post on his own page about a difficulty he faced in getting response from a mining company on a development. He did not mention the name of the company and any individual in the post.
But after that post, the company’s public relations officer, Albert Azongo, whom this author had tried to speak to regarding the issue since Saturday to no avail, sent an SMS to the author, saying he would reach out to him after 4:00 p.m.
Subsequently, this writer returned to his own Facebook page, updating the public that the public relations unit of that unnamed company had scheduled to speak to him later in the day.
But long before the scheduled time was due, Azongo telephoned the author of this report, expressing his displeasure about the two Facebook posts, even though his name and that of the company were not mentioned in them and this story had not been published yet. Shaanxi or Earl International is not the only mining company in Talensi.
When asked by this author to rather focus the conversation on whatever the company had got to say in response to the latest death, the alleged sacking of 35 employees, the safety concerns raised by the protesting workers and the allegations they made, he firmly replied: “You can go ahead with your publication. We will respond if we find it necessary to do [so].”
Many Ghanaians have died inside the Chinese company’s large yard at Gban, a community in eastern Talensi, and many have suffered permanent disabilities without compensation since the company arrived in the district in 2008.
The company currently is involved in multiple cases as a defendant at different law courts in the region. And soon to begin is another court case, featuring a young man, Godfred Nongbezina Nabil.
He lost his right arm in 2023 while working for the company and has not been compensated for the pain, the loss and the permanent disability he suffered.
He was 24 years of age when the incident happened at the company’s site.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
