Dear Editor,
As an employee of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), I must express my disgust at the public attacks of Ms Janette Bulkan on the GFC.
Even as a junior employee of the commission, I have been given the relevant training which enables me to easily calculate basic forest management principles such as the annual allowable area (AAA) and annual allowable cut (AAC). Yet after the GFC published a detailed response outlining all of the calculations Ms Bulkan then defended herself by putting forward more illogical arguments.
On the recent attempt (January 20) to ‘bad mouth’ the GFC and the Minister, she again did not correctly address the issues. The Minister and Commissioner simply said that Barama was generally complying with the GFC guidelines. The Minister and Commissioner have said over and over publicly, that while GFC would support any company going for FSC certification, it was really no concern of the GFC whether Barama was complying with FSC standards. The National Standards are the GFC guidelines; the FSC standards are not the National Standards and therefore GFC will not monitor for compliance with FSC standards.
In her letter she repeated for the umpteenth time, incorrect information about the prices that Barama gets for exporting logs from Guyana. Yet the GFC has time and time again pointed her to the real market prices as published by the International Tropical Timber Organization, which match those declared by Barama. Is Ms Bulkan now stating that she is more knowledgeable than the ITTO?
Yours faithfully,
Ajai Persaud
Forest Officer
