Dear Editor,
I was glad to read about the appointment of the Chairman and Board of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and was happier to learn that there was a new Chairman. What I did not understand was why it took so long to appoint a board – about 8 months. Similarly, the GCAA and GPL Boards were eventually appointed.
It is difficult to comprehend why a relatively simple thing as appointing a board takes so long. In any efficient administration, it should take no more than 10 days to appoint and have approved a board. But then again, it is possible that with a coalition government and all the various competing candidates and sponsors, a simple matter may not be that simple.
The board has some fresh faces and a better gender balance, but a significant omission is that of serious technical mining/geological expertise. This should be corrected early. If not, the technical staff at GGMC will attempt to make rings around the Commission.
The board that was replaced did boast of such expertise. Also, the parliamentary opposition does not appear to be represented and particularly in the era of social cohesion, this should be rectified.
There are many pressing challenges at the level of the board, principal among which are rampant corruption in the field mainly, and the question of ‘landlordism’.
The question of the failure of miners to declare gold production and that of environmental and safety issues must also be urgent on the agenda of the new board. But the issue we wish to address here is the question of landlordism.
At the meeting held with miners on Friday January 15, 2016 Minister Trotman in response to their complaints that they did not have any suitable land to work, “instructed the GGMC Board and Closed Area Committee to urgently release lands with known occurrence of minerals to small scale miners in each of the six mining districts”.
The so called instruction of the Minister is ill-conceived and obviously arises from a lack of knowledge of what is the reality on the ground. He is therefore wrong, dead wrong.
There is really no need to release lands from the closed areas for small miners because the real problem is landlordism in the mining districts, a matter that the Minister apparently failed to address in his meeting with miners, according to press reports.
If the Minister had bothered to obtain the facts he would have known that as far as small claims are concerned ten miners control over 5000 small claims with Ramnarine, Coates, Alphonso and Osman alone controlling 3730 claims. The top man in this group has 1560 claims.
That is the real problem. No wonder the small miners have no place to work.
As far as the Prospecting Permits Medium Scale (PPMS) are concerned, the top 13 miners control 2304 permits with the top 4 controlling 1230 permits. The top miner in the group above alone controls 565. By now it should be clear to the reader what is going on here.
Then we come finally to the mining permits where the top 8 miners above control 759 permits.
Not surprisingly the top 4 above control 531 permits. All of these figures in all three categories relate to Guyanese miners.
A close examination of the personalities in these categories reveal that the same persons who dominate the PPMS also dominate the small claims and the mining permits. In all, the extended group of miners comprises 28 persons.
The total number of PPMS mining permits and small claims controlled by this group exceeds 8575. The Alphonso, Ramnarine, Hopkinson, Coates, Lamazon and Osman group of 6 accounts for 5102 or 58.5%.
So there you are Minister.
If you open the closed areas the same group will gobble up everything. That is exactly how things have been at the GGMC for the last 23 years.
Where foreign mining is concerned, suffice it to say for the moment, that all the mining agreements with foreign companies from 1992-2015 should be tabled in the National Assembly and made available to the citizenry for analysis.
Yours faithfully,
Ramon Gaskin
