Information Management of Health and Safety at the Tarkwa Mine of Goldfields Ghana Limited

Abstract

The Tarkwa Mine (TM) of Goldfields Ghana Limited (GGL) undertakes open pit mining operations with gold recovery by heap leach technology. As a mine, it is susceptible to health and safety risks in its operations. In spite of health and safety policy and regulations put in place at the TM, there have been reported cases of some job-related injuries, accidents and diseases among the employees. Could it be that the employees are not aware of the health and safety policy and regulations? To answer this question, this paper sought to examine the level of employees’ awareness of the health and safety policy and regulations, the suitability of the medium of information provision and the quality of information given to the employees on health and safety. The level of awareness of, and the suitability of the medium of information provision on, health and safety policy and regulations were assessed by analysing employees’ responses obtained from questionnaire administration while the quality of information was assessed using the content of information from internal newsletters, brochures, notices and sign boards. It was found that majority of the employees are very much aware of the health and safety policy and regulations because of good mode and medium of information provision. Various ways of improving information provision at the TM of GGL to reduce health and safety risks have been provided.

Keywords: Information Provision, Awareness, Risk, Health and Safety Management