Causal and contributing factors of accidents in the Ghanaian mining industry

Abstract

Analysing accidents reveals trends, patterns, and causes to focus on when developing accident countermeasures. This study aimed to analyse the causal and contributory factors of accidents within Ghanaian gold mines. 701 accident investigation reports were collected from 7 large-scale mine sites. The reports were classified and coded using the human factor analysis and classification system adopted for the Ghana mining industry to identify the causes of accidents, taking into account the severity levels of the accidents. Unlike previous studies that focused mostly on high-consequence accidents, this study considered accidents of different severities to determine if associations exist between the severity levels and the causal factors. The results revealed that the majority of the causes of accidents were at the workplace/operator conditions tier. Specifically, leadership flaws were associated with accidents of high severity, such as moderate, major and catastrophic accidents, whereas the physical environment often resulted in accidents of low severity, such as insignificant and minor accidents. Again, when the causes at the operator’s act tiers are compared among themselves and with the accident severity levels, it was observed that mistakes were mostly associated with insignificant and moderate accidents, whereas slips mostly trigger minor accidents. Regarding the causal codes, procedural non-compliance, inadequate supervision, and unsafe design/construction caused most of the accidents for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Therefore, the mines should focus on improving workplace health and safety conditions since causes at the workplace condition tier were associated with most of the accidents.