The commitment given by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Robert Persaud to remove the deep-seated irregularities in the relationships between miners and state officials, one stakeholder says, will have to be “a tough and ruthless process” that will reveal just how “corrupt” the system has become and the inability of the state to properly monitor “the operational procedures” associated with the mining of gold.
Last week, Stabroek Business published a report based on an exclusive with a local gold miner who, during the interview, alluded to “routine irregularities” in the relationships between some miners and some officials of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC). According to the miner, the idea of setting up a committee to investigate GGMC officials over allegations of corruption are unlikely to bear much fruit since the nature of the corrupt transactions meant it was in the interest of neither the miners or the officials who are being accused of corruption to provide evidence that would help such an investigation.
Positing that illegal and irregular practices were “inevitable” in the gold mining sector, the miner told Stabroek Business he believed that “reducing – not removing but reducing” – the level of