Despite meeting with two government ministers, no answers were received regarding two excavators that were linked to furtive plans for a road in a remote part of Region Nine and villagers remain opposed to the building of a new road, Toshao of Karaudarnau Valare Anderson has said.
The chief of the Amerindian community, located in the south Rupununi, was in the city recently and he said he sought answers in meetings with Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud and Minister of Public Works Robeson Benn. “They said that they don’t know anything about the excavator,” Anderson told Stabroek News.
The Toshao said that he first met Persaud and was directed to the Public Works Ministry. There, he was asked what the Natural Resources Ministry had said to him. “Both ministers seh they don’t know anything about the excavators,” Anderson recounted. The excavators, which were linked to plans to build a road at Parabara and possibly mining in the New River Triangle, were on Sunday removed from Karaudarnau after being abandoned there for over three months.
Anderson said that the son of the Brazilian owner Junior Martin returned to collect the machines and said that they were being taken back to Lethem. Observers had said that Martin should have been questioned by the authorities over who had authorised the road works through Parabara and for what purpose.
The Toshao said villagers remained against the building of a new road on the community’s land. “I told the minister that we have the road that is existing, that we use,” Anderson said, while adding that they want the community’s resources to be protected.
Revelations of a proposed new road to Parabara prompted concerns and led to further revelations of planned prospecting in the New River Triangle, which was later aborted under pressure over the manner in which the permission was granted. Though there have been denials that there is a link between the two operations, observers had said it appeared that the intention to build the road towards the New River in south-east Guyana was part of the planning for a prospecting licence to be issued to Muri Brasil Ventures Inc (MBVI).
The disquiet over the now-aborted road being constructed through the remote community of Parabara led to a disclosure by Minister Persaud of the survey permission to MBVI.
That disclosure was made to the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), which had raised public concerns about the Parabara road. In a meeting, the GHRA was assured by the minister that there was no mining related road construction in the New River Triangle and that the Permission for Geological and Geophysical Surveys (PGGS) would not lead to prospecting there. Documents subsequently leaked showed that a maximum of eighteen prospecting licences in the New River Triangle for rare earth metals and other minerals were inevitable under the PGGS if applied for.
Persaud and the government came under pressure to explain when a decision was taken to open up the New River to mining along with a host of other questions. Persaud was also accused by the GHRA and the Natural Resources Committee of Parliament of not making a full disclosure on the matter of MBVI. MBVI subsequently pulled out of the venture.
The Karaudarnau Village Council had stopped the excavators from proceeding after learning of their intentions in relation to the Parabara road. The operators had not sought the permission of the council as is required. Martin subsequently told village leaders that he was going to get the permission of the authorities.
“It will affect my people, resources, animals, trees…,” Anderson had told Stabroek News, in explaining why he stopped the excavators from proceeding to build the road which would also run through the village.
