Workers Compensation Should Be Provided to American Indian Miners

For decades, Native American miners have worked the mines of the Colorado Plateau. Soft, yellow uranium ore was drilled from the rock by the miners. This uranium was used in the nuclear warheads that the US deployed around the country and that eventually helped win the Cold War. You will gain a deeper understanding about victoria workcover by checking out that resource.

Unfortunately, a great number of these miners were also injured by this uranium mining process. Most have either died or are dying from cancers and other illnesses as a direct result of their exposure to the uranium radiation inside the mines. Many have lost family members and even those that have survived continue to fight for their life.

The majority of workers have webs of scars on their arms from dialysis treatments. Many of the workers suffer from kidney failure, and being on dialysis is the required treatment. One or the most injurious factors in the mines was the drinking water that was provided, which has been tested and proven to be radioactive.

In 1990, Congress attempted to repay these miners by passing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. This law was intended to help uranium miners and those who suffer as a result of mining work. After all, these miners worked almost entirely on behalf of the American nuclear weapons program. Go to this site for further information on victorian work cover.

Every worker that mined uranium underground was granted $100,000 by Congress. The miner must experience one of six lung diseases caused by radiation exposure to be eligible for compensation. However, of the hundreds of Native Indian miners who are eligible to receive this payment, not one of them as seen a penny of it to this day.

The bill that was passed presents the miners with a range of obstacles to overcome. The first step is the most difficult and requires them to fill out paperwork written in English. For many American Indians, English is a foreign language that is not easily understood.

Only 96 of the 242 claims that have been filed through the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers have been approved. Overall 1,314 former uranium mines claims have been approved by the Justice Department. Unfortunately, over 1300 applications for compensation have also been denied.

A worker is required to provide check stubs for a record as proof of working there, plus more documentation is required to prove the specific amount of time the worker spent in the mines. Those types of records are seldom kept by the miners who have been working in the mines for decades. Copies of such records are difficult to obtain.

These uranium mines first became active sometime in 1947 on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The mines were welcomed by the people in the area because they brought jobs and income to the area. The American Indians wanted to jobs notwithstanding the low wages and poor working conditions.

Radon is seen as one of the leading health hazards in the mines. Radon is a radioactive gas, that is both ordorless and colorless, which is a result of decaying uranium. It was that exposure to radon that is believed to cause the majority of lung problems that makes these miners eligible for the promised government compensation.

This fall tribal officials, former miners and their supporters will ask Congress to change the law so that former miners will not have such a difficult time applying for their compensation. The challenge facing the government is that all Navajo miners believe that they are entitled to the compensation based solely on their work.