Decision on compensation for families of Lindo Creek victims soon

DPI, Guyana, Friday, March 29, 2019

The government could soon make a ruling on recommendations coming out of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the 2008 Lindo Creek Massacre, one of which suggests that close family members be compensated for the deaths of the eight miners.

Minister of State Joseph Harmon today said the government has gone through the recommendations but is still to make a formal ruling.

“The government has not made a firm ruling on the matter. There are some recommendations that have been made into the atrocities which were committed and the deaths which occurred, but there are no formal rulings,” he told members of the media at his Post Cabinet briefing today.

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.

Alexis Rodney

Images: The Department of Public Information