Local non-governmental organisation Policy Forum Guyana (PFG) has urged that village councils be vested with greater authority to control and manage rivers for the better protection of indigenous communities and the better preservation of the waterways.
“The need for a more robust legal regime for the protection of rivers is patently obvious. Moreover, since those whose lives are most bound up with clean, safe rivers are indigenous peoples, greater authority must be vested in Village Councils to control and manage rivers. Were that the case, the rights of indigenous communities to life, health and freedom of movement will be better protected and the integrity of the Upper Mazaruni River better preserved,” PFG said in a statement yesterday.
The group’s call has come in wake of an incident where it says over two dozen villagers from Jawalla were put at risk while travelling on the Mazaruni River last Monday.
In its statement, PFG said in the early hours of morning a party of some 30 villagers of all ages from Jawalla set out to visit to the site of the famous Karowrieng rock paintings.
It noted that passengers in their boat were seated on mattresses placed over plastic crates. “In the darkness the boat approached a Brazilian ‘dragga,’ a more powerful operation than the tradition-al dredge. Without warning, the steel cable anchoring the dragga to trees across the river – an illegal practice – rose out of the water. The rising cable scraped the face of the first man at the front of the boat and his cries alerted everyone else. Because of the manner they were lying on the mattresses the cable skimmed above them and no one else was injured. The workers on the river bank raising the cable shouted abuse at the passengers,” it added.
According to PFG, had the travellers been seated in a normal way, they could all have been swept into the river or decapitated.
It added that although this particular event had no more serious consequence than a severe fright for the passengers, navigating the Mazaruni between Jawalla and Imbaimadai constitutes a daily hazard for the indigenous communities. Even experienced boat captains, it said, are challenged by currents and eddies constantly changing as a result of the sand-banks caused by tailings from mine-sites.
PFG further noted that individual villagers are increasingly fearful of dangers posed by river travel on this stretch of the Upper Mazaruni, which remains the only physical means of communication between these communities and Kamarang, where most sub-regional public services, such as police, health, education, mining and agriculture, are located.
The organisation charged that the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) is too often a bystander in such situations. “Whether its inaction results from being too thin on the ground, or being in thrall to the mining lobby, or impeded by the corruption that seeps like a mist through all levels of mining operations, – including in some communities – is unclear,” it added.
Additionally, PFG noted that local Toshaos and Village Councils rules relating to governing operations of draggas on rivers are not respected by owners of mine-sites, who are well aware that communities have little power to enforce them. It said this sense of impunity has been reinforced by a court judgement, which ruled that the rivers belong to the State, not the communities, after an attempt by a Mazaruni Village Council to remove a miner.
