Small miners in Omai, Region 8 are being threatened with eviction in order to facilitate a large foreign mining company with which the government intends to sign an agreement. This would cause great hardship to a large number of persons, and the government instead should seek to regularize the miners’ operations, former PNCR parliamentarian Aubrey Norton said recently.
Many small miners have been working in the area and have contended they had permission to do so, especially at Quartz Hill, but the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has carried out raids citing the presence of illegal miners in the mined out areas at Omai.
Norton noted in a letter published in this newspaper on December 19 that the small miners recognise that there is