Fresh concerns have emerged in Ghana’s Upper East Region about the often-discussed safety of workers at Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited following the latest death of another mineworker on Wednesday, 4 March 2026.
Sources at the company told Media Without Borders that the employee, known only as Dauda, was found motionless underground after the Chinese company, formerly called Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited, conducted a blasting operation at its site in Talensi.
“After the blast, he went down. They (his colleagues) waited for a long time; he was not coming out. They traced and found him lying down flat,” one of the sources said.
Another source added: “When they picked him, he was breathing small-small (slowly). But he died on the way to hospital.”
Dauda’s death comes barely five months after his fellow worker, Zuuroug Zong, was reportedly killed on duty by fumes from a mining explosive.
The Chinese company’s public relations officer, Albert Azongo, did not respond to a request from the author of this report for the company’s comment on the latest tragedy. He declined to comment when this writer contacted him for answers to some questions after Zong (the other worker) died last year.
The public would recall that after Zong died on Wednesday, 22 October 2025, several workers went on strike, locked the company’s main gate during a demonstration and a branch of the Ghana Mineworkers’ Union revealed in a letter that the employees were working under unsafe conditions at the company’s site.
Before Dauda and Zong joined the continually rising number of casualties, many Ghanaians had suffered permanent disabilities and what observers described as needless deaths through the company’s operations.
The survivors and families of the deceased hardly receive any compensation from the company.
While the survivors and the families of the victims affected by these recurrent tragedies fight daily for survival, the Paramount Chief of Talensi, Tongraan Kugbilsong Nanlebegtang, is hardly heard publicly condemning the company.
But he is often heard in public passionately defending and promoting the company’s interests, an outlook that has continued to raise critical questions from sections of the public, including development watchers, about his leadership and his own interests.
A list of some of the countless casualties
Two young nurses, Thomas Agombire and Gloria Atimbila, were knocked down and run over by a Shaanxi-owned Toyota Land Cruiser with registration number WX 8888- 18 on Wednesday, 21 August 2019, in the region.
The crash occurred on the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Pulmakom Road as the two nurses were returning home in the afternoon from work on one motorbike.
Doctors amputated Agombire’s right leg at the Presbyterian Hospital in Bawku, a municipality in the northeastern area of the region, to save his life after the crash.
Atimbila, who sat behind Agombire on the bike, was severely injured in the right eye and right hand. She underwent a series of surgeries financed with a loan she personally secured from a bank.
The two nurses have not been compensated by the company to this day.
Agombire currently uses a pair of crutches and a prosthesis (an artificial leg) to aid his movement from home to his workplace.
He purchased the prosthetic leg, which is now worn out, with support from the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA).
The underprivileged families (children and wives) of the 16 Ghanaians who were killed by a Shaanxi explosion in 2019 are still stuck in isolated grief without compensation.
One of the company’s employees named Victor Abisiyine Ayine, went missing on duty on Monday, 10 July 2023.
His body was found the following day in the company’s pool of wastewater after his younger brother, Jonathan, and some other relatives appeared unannounced at the company’s site and strongly demanded his whereabouts.
An accident claimed another life when Eric Frimpong was setting up some rocks underground for blasting on Friday, 17 November 2023.
He was killed in the blast.
In the last week of December, 2023, another worker, Kwesi Boalbil, suddenly collapsed on duty at the company’s mine. Doctors declared him dead shortly after he was taken to hospital.
On Thursday, 10 April 2025, a young Mujah Fahad died after a skip, a robust bucket used in transporting ore to the surface of a mine shaft, fell on him, smashing his ribcage apart.
He was the son of one of the company’s security guards, Namtibil.
Sources told this writer that the number of Talensi people killed so far since the arrival of the Chinese company in 2008 was close to 80 as of the last quarter of 2025.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana/ West Africa
