Sources inside Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited, a Chinese-owned company now rebranded as Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited, have revealed that the 35 workers who were sacked recently for going on strike in protest against unsafe working conditions have been recalled.
The sources added that the company had invited “a medical doctor” from Tamale, a city in Ghana’s Northern Region, to conduct health examinations for its employees.
According to the sources, the medical assessment is set for tomorrow, Monday, at the company’s premises in Talensi, a district in the Upper East Region.
The sources, however, said they would wait and see if the “doctor” or medical team would conduct an independent assessment, and if the examination results would accurately capture their true health status.
The reported invitation from the company to the doctor comes after some of the mineworkers told the author of this report last week about their work environment.
They voiced a strong conviction during the anonymised interviews that underground blast fumes were having a serious impact on their health at the company’s site.
“We can feel we are dying slowly,” one of the employees said. “It’s like they see gold as more important than our lives.”
Two dead so far after collapsing on duty
The strike action that took place last month and the staff protest that hit the Chinese company on Thursday, 13 November 2025, were triggered by the death of an Earl worker.
Zuuroug Zong, according to his colleagues, was killed on Wednesday, 22 October 2025, by fumes from a mining explosive blasted just before he was sent underground.
The colleagues revealed that the company had a strict policy of forcing workers to enter the mine even when there were still fumes from recent blasts.
Zong is the second Shaanxi employee known to have collapsed on duty and died within the past 23 months.
His fellow worker, Kwesi Boalbil, died on Sunday, 31 December 2023, after collapsing on Thursday, 28 December 2023, at the company’s gold-processing plant.
A number of mineworkers assigned to the company’s Shaft Three, where Zong collapsed last month, went on strike, demanding safe working conditions.
Following persuasion from the company’s management, the workers returned from the strike action. But 35 individuals, who were identified as the initiators of the labour strike, were sacked, according to sources.
An open protest followed their dismissal, with the protesting staff locking the company’s gate and vowing to shut down the company’s operations if their colleagues were not reinstated.
When this writer contacted the company’s public relations officer, Albert Azongo, for comment last week regarding Zong’s death, the ensuing staff protests and the alleged sacking of the 35 workers, he said: “You can go ahead with your publication. We will respond if we find it necessary to do [so].”
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
