Dear Editor,
The year 2016 makes it 100 years of bauxite mining in Guyana, and what does Guyana have to show for it? Basically nothing. From the end of the 1920s onwards bauxite mining was being done by the Canadian firm Alcan, and they did so much for Canada. They also had a shipping company by the name of Saguenay. We then nationalised the company in the ʼ70s, and what did we obtain from them?
A gold company came to our country and after several years they could boast that they had mined a large amount of gold, but how did Guyana benefit from such exploits? We presently have two gold mining firms and a huge logging firm and we have finally struck oil. Are we going to continue with the same trend of firms exploiting our resources and in the end we have nothing to show for it. Guyanese should not encourage such nonsense; we’re worth far more than just crumbs.
Yours faithfully,
Derick Bacchus
