The creation of a regime of good order at mining locations that enables the efficient, legally acceptable and environmentally sustainable exploitation of the country’s mineral resources can only be realized through a combination of effective enforcement of mining laws on the one hand and the preparedness of the miners themselves to adhere to those laws.
“There are challenges on both sides and a lot of effort is going into addressing those challenges by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) on the one hand and the investors and workers in the mining industry, on the other,” Minister in the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment Simona Broomes has told the Stabroek Business.
Broomes, who was reassigned to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry in January of this year and who has since been holding weekly ‘open’ meetings with stakeholders in the sector including miners, employees and GGMC officials said that a critical part of the objective of her meetings is to “help create a better official understanding of the nature of the challenges facing the industry” in order to
fashion lasting solutions to those problems. “Of course these meetings cannot avoid having to deal with the individual problems facing miners and people who want to invest in the industry. I think the real value of the meetings here is that they create a forum that can often expedite solutions to problems that may otherwise take several years to resolve.”
Broomes said that her own experience in the mining sector has caused her to develop an understanding of the “real problems” of the industry and the challenges associated with finding solutions. “We can say all we want about rules and regulations. Enforcement is the important issue. We have to have the will and the resources to enforce the rules. Without enforcement the industry will always be vulnerable.”
The minister said she believes Guyana is “only at the beginning of the journey” as far as properly regulating the gold-mining industry is concerned. “Not so long ago we were talking about a wild west situation as far as mining gold was concerned. There was not enough access to law-enforcement and people did pretty much as they pleased. The question that has to be answered is how far have we come from those days. Sometimes I am not certain. Gold may have become a more prominent commodity as far as the economy is concerned but many of the bad practices still persist and we still have some way to go as far as building the infrastructure is concerned,” she said.
And according to Broomes, official efforts to create a regime of good order in the sector continue to be challenged by “completely unacceptable” forms of behaviour” by some players in the industry. “It is not always easy to determine the accuracy or otherwise of what we are told but my own engagements with workers, miners and GGMC field officers tell me that there are almost certainly instances of irresponsible behaviour across the board,” she added.
On the issue of mining accidents and attendant casualties Broomes said that in her view it was “one of the important emergencies” in the sector. “I say this because of the avoidable loss of life involved. The sad truth is that many lives have been lost because of failure to follow the rules. What so often drives miners is getting to the gold. Sometimes the fact that lives are being put at risk does not appear to occur to them,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, she has become concerned over the number of instances of “what appears to be intimidation of small operators by more powerful people in the industry.” Asserting that “that has become a worrying problem” Broomes said the GGMC has had to deal with cases in which “bullying and intimidation” are employed to settle disputes. “What worries us is that sometimes we are told that these scenes are played out in the presence of armed security personnel, sometimes policemen. The position of this ministry and, I believe, the Government of Guyana, is that police officers care there to enforce the law. We don’t want to hear of them playing any other role.”
Asked to proffer a perspective on her own role in addressing the challenges facing the sector Broomes said that in the months since she has been engaging stakeholders both at the GGMC secretariat and at mining locations she had been able to use her personal experience in the sector to better understand issues and problems. “I believe that the fact that I have been able to interface with the actual stakeholders in the industry makes my job easier,” she said. “When an issue or a problem arises it is a good thing that you are able to bring your experience to bear in trying to understand that problem and to solve it. Sometimes you hear a story and it is not possible to easily separate what is true from what is not. What helps is your ability to use your experience to try to determine what was likely to have happened in that particular situation.”
Asked about corrupt practices in the gold-mining sector involving state-employed workers, Broomes said, “The fact of the matter is that there is a policing role for what you describe as state-employed workers and in a sector like gold-mining it would be silly to delude ourselves into believing that corrupt practices do not occur. I believe that the temptation will always be there and that there will always be incidents or at least suspicions of incidents. We can minimize it by doing a few things. First, as a government we must make clear our opposition to those practices. Then we must do things that lie in our power to discourage it. We can properly incentivize the state employees who do the policing job and we can ensure the rules are clear and not difficult to follow. We can also remove some of the temptations to break the rules. For example, by working towards a more equitable allocation of lands for mining we can push back the practice of illegal occupation of lands. That would help put an end to all of these incidents that arise out of what one might call squatting. We have also been talking over the years about the need to upgrade policing in mining areas. ‘The ‘bush,’ as we call it, is no longer ‘the bush.’ It is one of the most important economic centres of our country and there is need for us to concentrate on equipping those areas with the sorts of infrastructure that they deserve.”
And according to the minister, a point has now been reached where there is need to stop “bellyaching” over the fact that the growth of the gold-mining sector had brought with it some ills for the society and work to reduce those ills. “Of course we are worried about the damage to the environment and those cases of disregard for safety and the violence that sometimes raises its head in the interior and the bullying and the landlordism,” she said, “but that does not mean that we should pack up and go home. While we exploit the minerals for our economic benefit we need to work as hard as we can to address the problems – and when I say we, I mean government, the miners and the other stakeholders.”
Meanwhile, Broomes, who has won both local and external recognition for her work to roll back trafficking in persons said that the link that has been created between the gold mining sector and trafficking was deeply unfortunate. “I believe that if more of us were to see, first hand, the consequences of trafficking we would better understand why, as a government, as a people, we have to continue to fight this demon. Personally, I am a firm believer in the importance of growing the economy through the mining sector but I will have a huge problem once I come to believe that there is any kind of acceptance that the price that we have to pay is to treat our people like less than humans,” she said.
