-Regional Chairman
The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) says its officers have been vigilant in monitoring the road to Salbora in Region 8 and records show that no illegal activities have taken place to cause further damage since August last year but the region differs.
Regional authorities have insisted that there are pork-knockers who go into the area at nights, set up and work on several patches of the road. Regional Chairman Senor Bell told this newspaper yesterday that on September 22 last, he and a police constable went into the area late one night and met a few small miners with lamps across the road working on several patches there. He said the police have seized an engine and a hose which are in custody.
According to Bell, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds was alerted.
Bell clarified yesterday that the case is not one of the GGMC not going into the area to check on whether there was any illegal activity but the fact is that the small miners go in at nights and by morning they disappear.
He pointed out that there have been no reports that the large dredge owners are engaged in the actions this time around. He believes though that the reason why the small miners have not been deterred from committing the illegal mining is because there is a view that no one has been seriously penalized for the damage to the road back in August last year.
Meanwhile, acting GGMC Commissioner William Woolford during an interview with Stabroek News yesterday showed this reporter the daily diaries completed by mines officers as well as a report compiled by supervisors of mines officers who inspected the area following the officers’ checks.
Those records which indicate the officers’ activities from September 13 to October 7 indicate that mines officers had checked the Salbora Road for any illegal activities that may have occurred.
“Upon those visits there were neither miners nor mining equipment seen within the vicinity of the Salbora Road,” was the consensus of all the daily reports for the period.
Meanwhile Woolford did not deny that maybe at nights some miners could attempt to mine the road, but according to him if this was detected the mines officer would go back to see any damage and if there was need for around the clock monitoring they would camp out in the area. “But there was no need for this and so we haven’t done this,” he said.
He recounted that between September 6 and 9 the commission had found that some small miners were working in the buffer area of the road. According to him those miners were identified and their equipment seized. He said the commission is currently in the process of processing charges for those miners.
Out of Court
Last year when a number of miners were found culpable of dredging the Salbora Road, Woolford had said that they would be charged. However when asked about the status of these charges, Woolford could not give a definitive answer.
Asked whether there was another way which the miners could settle such matters, Woolford said there was provision for an out-of-court settlement process. To this end he explained that the commission would prepare the charges and make the miners aware and if they applied for the out-of- court settlement, depending on the severity of the breaches, they would pay fines.
If for instance a miner is found guilty of mining on the road reserve area he could pay as much as $250,000 for each dredge.
In the case of the August wrecking of the Salbora Road, he said he believed some of those errant miners have applied for the out-of-court settlement. However he said their charges are so grave that the commission has moved for forfeiture of their dredges, so the settlement may be difficult.
Woolford was confident that the commission has seen no further damage to the road but noted that it is possible that persons may have been stopped from trying to set up equipment to do work there. He further stated that there were never any repairs done to the Salbora Road following the substantial damage last year, so mines officers would have an idea of any fresh damage.
He insisted that the commission had an early detection system in place and there was no way that miners would be working along the road and it would not be detected because of the commission’s daily visits.
Reports from the region have indicated that small miners have again made the road their target and have started to mine several parts of it. Sources have also reported that there seems to be some amount of collusion between the mines officers and miners, leading to a lack of action from the authorities in effectively dealing with the matter.
In August larger and more established miners had dredged out several sections of the road, disrupting the water system to the community and inconveniencing families. GGMC had given the Guyana Water Inc money to repair the water system.
