Dear Editor,
I recently read an interesting article in the Guyana Chronicle dated January 26th, headlined “President off to Russia today”. I must compliment President Jagdeo for this initiative by going to Russia meeting both with President Putin and also Executives of Rusal the giant aluminum producer.
My understanding is the President wants assurances that this company would not only engage in extracting and shipping the ore from Guyana in an unprocessed form, but rather get more involved in having it refined here. The very article also mentioned that President Jagdeo wants the same assurance from the Chinese company Bosai Mineral Group which brought the Linden bauxite operations from IAMGOLD for US$ 46M. However, I felt the President’s main concern is the safeguarding of the thousands of jobs that depend on the bauxite industry in Guyana. This is undoubtedly the kind of thinking we need for this country to develop for the benefit of its entire people.
It now brings me to this question, why then does the President seem to take a different view on the current boiling issues taking place with regards to the timber industry. I have seen first hand where the mainly Asian timber companies are only interested in exporting logs. From reports and articles in the newspaper this seems to have accelerated over these last 5 years at the expense of processing or value-added activities.
What is even worse is the large numbers of foreign Asian workers brought in to work for these companies even though local persons can easily do these jobs with some training.
I find it very necessary to draw this issue parallel to the President’s initiative to personally ensure that a good deal is struck for the bauxite industry to guarantee mutual benefit to both investor and country.
Unlike the bauxite industry which is very capital intensive, the timber industry can easily benefit thousands of persons who are involved in both processing logs (using mobile mills directly in the forest) and those involved in the downstream processing in factories.
We at Linden welcome what President Jagdeo plans for the bauxite industry but would like to ask him to correct what is taking place in another very vital sector of our country, the timber industry. Time is not on our side.
Yours faithfully,
O. Gilkes
