Attorney General to advise on Lindo Creek CoI recommendation

DPI, GUYANA, Friday, June 14, 2019

Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams, SC has been tasked with offering advice on the recommendations coming out of the Lindo Creek Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

Director General Joseph Harmon said today that Head of State President David Granger has asked the AG to advise on the recommendations that were made.

“It is a matter now engaging the Attorney General before we move forward,” he told the media at his post Cabinet press briefing.

Following the completion of the Commission of Inquiry led by retired Justice Donald Trotman last year, recommendations suggested that the family members be given financial compensation since many of the miners were the sole breadwinners of their households.

Among the other recommendations was the proposal that counselling be provided to the families of the deceased. It was also suggested that that the hill leading to the mining camp at Lindo Creek, be renamed “Arokium Hill” and for monuments to be erected in each of the villages where the miners lived.

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry was established on February 1, 2018, to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the killings of Cecil Arokium, Dax Arokium, Horace Drakes, Bonny Harry, Lancelot Lee, Compton Speirs, Nigel Torres and Clifton Berry Wong, on or about June 21, 2008.

The men’s burnt bodies were discovered at Lindo Creek, by mining camp owner Leonard Arokium on the morning of June 21. He had told officials that information he received from eyewitnesses showed that it was the Joint Services that was responsible for the death of his son, brother and six other miners in his employ.

Images: DPI