Dear Editor,
I am a resident of the Micobie Amerindian Village of the lower Potaro river. This is to let you know that I feel sorry for my village having its mineral resources raped and plundered by Georgetown claim-holders who are defying the cease work orders imposed on them by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and whose officials are not carrying out monitoring activities to ensure compliance with the cease work orders. As a result the state may be losing millions of dollars in revenue critical for our country’s development. I do not think as yet our Prime Minister knows what is going on in our village, and I am kindly asking him to visit our village so that he can hear the views of residents. The Prime Minister should treat this invitation as urgent and very important.
As a resident of my village, I am frequently asking myself why was our community given a land title with mining claims belonging to coastlanders within the boundaries of our village.
This is absolutely wrong, because it is at present causing our village council lots of headaches since they are unable to strategically plan our village development. The claim-holders do not want to leave our village with their mining equipment, despite the GGMC’s cease work order and the instructions of our village council.
Recently the GGMC gave the Micobie Village Council the assurance that the claim-holders would be removed within three days, and alternative mining grounds outside the village lands would be found for them. The claim-holders should have removed from our village lands since July 12, 2008, but they haven’t done so and have now resorted to raiding (stealing) the mineral resources from our village lands using their dredging equipment. When this is happening no GGMC’s field officers are seen in our village.
It is apparent that the GGMC’s mines officers are collaborating with the claim-holders and as a result they should be removed from the mining district.
The GGMC should urgently appoint a Micobie resident to perform the functions of a warden so that illegal gold mining activities can be stopped.
The Micobie village residents recognize that the state has ownership of our country’s mineral resources, but this does not mean that mining claims ownership cannot be withdrawn by the state, especially if those claims are within titled Amerindian villages. The fact is that in Micobie Village there are mining claims owned by coastlanders which run counter to private land ownership where trespassers are normally prosecuted according to the laws of our country. But in Micobie Village the trespassers are not prosecuted by virtue of their ownership of mining claims in a titled Amerindian village.
The Micobie Village Council was assured at the time of receiving its land title that the ownership of claims within its boundaries would be nullified by a certain date from March 2006 when the village received its title, but so far the claim-holders are still present on our village lands. And what is worse and scandalous is that the claim-holders made payments to the GGMC on their claims for the year 2008. The Commissioner (ag) of the GGMC should provide an explanation why the GGMC accepted payments for the year 2008 from the claim-holders when payments for such claims should have stopped at the end of 2006.
Mr Editor, the GGMC seems incompetent to deal with our problems. I am therefore humbly appealing to his Excellency the President to intervene and use his presidential powers to have the ownership of mining claims in our village withdrawn as early as possible.
Yours faithfully,
Raymond Williams
Editor’s note
We sent two similar letters to GGMC Commissioner (ag) William Wooford for comment, one of them also relating to Micobie, but have received no response as yet. Nevertheless, we will forward this one as well for any comments he might wish to make.
