Even as the smuggling of gold out of Guyana attracts enhanced public attention following recent disclosures regarding the illegal movement of the precious metal to the United States, the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association [GGDMA] has weighed in with a statement on the issue in which it tags the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission [GGMC], the state agency responsible for the administration of the sector, as being significantly deficient in its responsibility to curb the practice. A terse media release from the GGDMA late last month broke with the ‘diplomacy’ that is often associated with public pronouncements on gold-smuggling, pointedly suggesting that the state entity charged with administering the gold sector, including serving as a watchdog for the state’s interests therein, is part of the problem and therefore, in the current circumstances, is ill-equipped to be part of the solution.
What is viewed in some quarters as a lack of authority on the part of the state-run GGMC to reach into what is regarded as the ‘protected’ crevices sheltering illegal gold mining and smuggling, is regarded, elsewhere, as what is believed to be an enabling role in the practice. Whatever the truth, the GGDMA recently issued one of its more ‘feisty’ media releases, seemingly pointing to what it sees as a calculated official indifference to mounting an aggressive response to the problem. The GGDMA is contending that illegal mining, illegal shops, and the unregulated trading of gold in the interior where the precious metal is recovered, are the “pillars” upon which the illicit movement of gold out of Guyana have been erected, pointing to what it sees as an environment enabled by a ‘facilitating’ official posture.
An earlier Stabroek News report on the issue had said that a GGDMA official had expressed the view that the proliferation of the practice, notwithstanding, there was “no serious evidence” that the authorities are making any energetic effort to eradicate the irregularities in the sector, not least those that have to do with the blatant transgression of laid down operating rules relating to the operations of the sector. The source of the information reportedly went further, asserting that much of the gold being recovered and “absorbed into illegal transactions” is “unofficially cleared” inside the GGMC itself. The suggestion here is that the illegal ‘treatment’ of gold mined in Guyana operates largely outside the purview of the state-run agency though reports have tended not to point fingers in any particular direction. However, the Stabroek News report of Sunday June 30th had tagged the ‘pillars’ – “illegal mining, illegal shops and the unregulated trading of gold within the interior” as, reportedly, upon which gold smuggling stands.
In its recent aggressive public pronouncement on the incidence of gold smuggling, the GGDMA strongly implies that the government itself must share the blame for the practice, insofar as the authorities appear indifferent to the importance of rigorous enforcement of its own laws. The aggression that underpins the GGDMA’s recent pronouncement would appear to have been fuelled by the high profile news on gold smuggling that has occupied in the public space in recent weeks. Contextually, the Association’s recent pronouncement on the operations of the sector, calls on government, not for the first time, to put its foot down on gold smuggling and to begin by curbing attendant illegal activities that seemingly enables the practice, including what is believed to be acts of official corruption.
While the GGDMA has, over time, persistently frowned on what it appears to see as official tolerance of practices that enable anomalies in the administering of the sector, its most recent release, seemingly taking advantage of the high profile which the illegal export of gold currently enjoys, tags the ‘pillars’ as part of a wider platform upon which illicit gold smuggling practice survives. Contextually, the GGDMA release takes the GGMC to task for what it says is the agency’s lax enforcement in the sector, a circumstance which, it says, allows illegalities to flourish. The GGMC, the GGDMA says, has, over the years, turned “a blind eye” to repeat offenders, merely slapping them on the wrist, which in turn has fostered a culture of “unabashed lawlessness.”
Painting some of the practices in the gold mining industry as tantamount to placing the operations of the gold mining sector outside of state regulation and control, the GGDMA release asserts that illegal operators in the sector openly set aside the GGMC’s regulations through measures that include violent threats and the defiant illegal re-opening of officially closed operations. While the GGDMA has reportedly welcomed assurances given by the government on the issue of instituting more robust measures to roll back the gold-smuggling tidal wave, the global trend that underpins the practice would appear to suggest that curbing the practice here in Guyana may well have long drifted outside the realm of state control.
