A Region 1(Barima-Waini) family is pleading with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs to intervene after their cottage and crops and fruit trees were demolished by a gold miner who has laid claim to the area.
“We have lived here since 2004 and my family before that. It is not a big area we were on; it is like a Georgetown house lot but we plant it up with fruit trees and crops we need to eat; mangoes, pears (avocado), whitie, peach, cashews, lemons, lime…then they came and said it had gold, and before we could blink the excavator start destroy everything,” Ianna villager Keith Smith lamented to Stabroek News via the phone of a shop owner on Saturday.