Over 17 illegal miners are feared dead in a mining pit at Nsuta, a gold mining community near Bondaye in the Prestea Huni Valley District of the Western Region.

Mr. Ibrahim Musah, who was also working in the same underground pit, told the Today newspaper that the Galamsey Committee at Nsuta should be blamed for negligence.

Narrating his side of the story, Musah said that he heard a large sound, and so he quickly warned the illegal miners but they ignored.

“I heard a blast, so I called my boy, but I saw he had been trapped in the cage upstairs,” he said.

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He added that “while I was crying, one boy just fell in front of me, from the top. And when I asked him, he said he left the pit when he heard the blast at the top, and confirmed that one of my boys had been trapped. We managed to pass through the other exit, about 50 of us.”

According to him, they wanted to rescue those trapped, but it was difficult because there was too much from the blast.

He said that when they got to the pit again, they found out that the blast had covered those at the middle portion.

“We held one, tried to pull the dead body, but found that where he was locked in the cage, if we pull him, the soil will crack further and kill us.

“…so we passed through another pit, and began digging from the top of the waste, searching for any survivor. So that was the strategy we adopted,” he explained.

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When asked if the incident had scared him, Musa said: “In fact, I am a brave man, but for yesterday [last Sunday], only God saved me. I was able to gather 50 people out. The 17 were just unlucky!”

Musa was also asked if he would stop galamsey but this is what he said: “it is the work we do for a living. So even today, if someone comes to me and informs me that there is another area rich in gold, I will go. Some of us are experts in the work.”

He believed that the incident was just a bad day for them.

“This is the first time I am working in that pit, someone gave me a contract, so I went with my nine boys. If this pit was for me, this accident wouldn’t have happened,” he indicated.

Touching on safety issues, Musah said: “those days that we were at 4-bungalows, when we see those who did not fix cages in their pits, we reported them to the committee.