The main opposition APNU will at the next sitting of the National Assembly on December 19 be putting a number of questions to Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Persaud regarding his granting of a mineral survey permit for the south east of the country and over the answers he had given during a parliamentary committee hearing.
Speaking to Stabroek News yesterday, APNU MP Joe Harmon said that though the Minister did not lie to the Committee which met on November 27, he was economical with the truth.
Harmon said too that he was considering strongly causing Parliament’s Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources to have a special meeting to discuss this issue with the Minister. According to Harmon, he was told by an official at the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) that this is the first time that a Permit for Geological and Geophysical Survey (PGGS) was ever issued and the feeling is that it is a surreptitious way to get the company, Muri Brasil Ventures access to a prospecting licence for the exploration of rare earth elements, in demand by manufacturers of smartphones and tablets.
The Minister is maintaining that he did not lie in the committee and that there is no mining in the areas east of the New River. However, observers say that there is a damning clause in the PGGS obligating the GGMC to grant a maximum of 18 prospecting licences for a variety of minerals whenever an application is made. The observers question why the application was not handled via the customary prospecting licence which would have come under the purview of the GGMC. Instead, the PGGS is under ministerial signature.
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Persaud himself signed the PGGS in November 2012 and this arrangement was never publicised. Neither did he mention this at the committee hearing on November 27, 2013.
Moreover, the PGGS pertains to an area of the country that is ecologically sensitive and was not intended for mining based on previous utterances by the Ministry of Natural Resources. Observers have also raised questions about the persons behind Muri Brasil Ventures. They contend that rare earths surveys should accord with a defined policy and only searched for by certain companies.
The directors of Muri Brasil are Dean Hassan and Yucatan Coutinho Reis. Hassan was previously associated with North American Resources Limited.
The controversy over the PGGS was preceded by concerns over preparations for a mystery mining road leading to the south east of Guyana. This disclosure led to pressure on the ministry to move against the road plans.
