The home of the Ghanaian minister involved in negotiations over a deadly $395 million mining dispute between Australian and Chinese state-linked mining companies has caught fire, as community anger grows in response to the government’s handling of the affair.

Mining minister Samuel Jinapor was in Australia when his house in the capital, Accra, caught fire on Saturday AEST. The minister had met with officials from Australian miner Cassius in Perth hours before the blaze took hold of the second floor of his house in the suburb of Adjiringanor.

Jinapor and the Ghanaian Minerals Commission had agreed to investigate the alleged theft of millions of dollars worth of gold from an Australian mine in Africa by Chinese state-linked company Shaanxi and question its officials over the deaths of dozens of local miners in its pits in northern Ghana.

Ghana’s National Fire Service is investigating the cause of the fire. The blaze gutted an upstairs bedroom leaving behind a trail of blackened shoes, clothes and a Louis Vuitton labelled handbag.

In Ghana, senior political leaders, local activists and villagers have called for the Ghanaian government to be held to account for the incidents, revealed by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age investigation Blood Gold, accusing the government of abandoning them while Shaanxi had its license expanded to 50 times its original size. Jinapor became mining minister in 2021, two years after the deadliest incident at the mine in which 16 local miners were allegedly killed by poisonous gasses to stop them from entering the Chinese territory.

Talensi pastor Albert Naa said the community had received minimal attention from local, regional or national authorities.

“For the past years that these incidents have been ongoing, no single compensation has been paid to anybody,” he said. “That is what frightens us.”

On social media, some Ghanaians suggested the fire was a response to the frustration caused by the government’s mismanagement of mining communities.