Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter by Kit Nascimento in your Tuesday September 17, 2019 edition referring to his issues with the physical works on Sheriff Street. I would also like to make reference to reports of a worker dying in Sophia on the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) Project. Both of these projects are funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
The IDB has strict environmental and social safeguards, even if our government continues to ignore the intentional or unintentional negative impacts of development projects in Guyana. The IDB is supposed to be supervising these projects including the implementation of the safeguards. The IDB office in Guyana should let us know what they are doing to ensure the mitigation and minimization of the negative impacts. I advise the persons affected by these projects to contact the IDB office in Guyana. The IDB in Guyana’s Contact Information is as follows: 47 High Street, Kingston Georgetown, Telephone 225-7951, Email:IDBGuyana@iadb.org. Project Affected Persons can also email the office in Washington DC, United States. The contact information for the US office is: By mail: Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism, 1300 New York Av., NW, Washington, D.C. 20577, United States, Email: mecanismo@iadb.org. The process for filing a complaint with the IDB Head Office can be found at the link: https://www.iadb.org/en/mici/how-file-complaint.
In February 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States in a 7-1 ruling stated that the World Bank does not have complete legal immunity and one of its arms can be sued in relation to its lending activities. This ruling opened other international development agencies to the threats of lawsuits over the impacts of the activities they financed. By the way, that ruling was as a result of a lawsuit by members of a fishing community whose livelihoods were destroyed in India by a World Bank financed project.
Fellow Guyanese citizens should be aware that they do not have to passively suffer from these development projects.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
