The week before last the Ministry of Natural Resources issued a press release on mining. It was a strange statement clearly directed at miners, but whose purpose for all of that was not immediately apparent. The release said that it wanted to advise that “illegal mining activities will not be tolerated and is calling on all miners to follow the prescribed process to legitimize their operations.” The Ministry went on to urge “[t]hose who are engaging in such activities [to] desist, or risk being prosecuted by the state.” Given the record of mining oversight in this country, it was not a threat which would have left members of that community shaking in their boots.
Having divested itself of the obligatory warning, the Ministry went on to assure small and medium-scale miners that it remained “eager to foster greater collaboration” with them in order “to ensure the sector remains a viable one.” In other words the authorities by implication opened themselves to the interpretation that miners could ignore the warnings, because there was no intention at the political level of putting a brake on their operations. As if to reinforce that construction of their words, the remainder of the statement itemised at some length all the measures the government had taken to facilitate miners, and had nothing to say about any proposals it might have to deal with “illegal mining activities.”
It is more than likely that all it had in mind with respect to illegalities in any case were the issues surrounding gold-smuggling after the allegations against the Mohammeds and Permanent Secretary Mae Toussaint Jnr Thomas came to light two months ago. Following that revelation various measures were announced relating to business being conducted in the interior and entities trading in vulnerable minerals, but these were not accompanied by anything addressing the myriad other issues pertaining to the mining sector.
As such, the press release listed a litany of benefits the PPP/C government had provided for miners such as the removal of VAT on various items, the dispensing with police clearance to transport fuel in their vehicles and the abolition of excise tax on a number of things. Then there was the support afforded by the provision of properties through lotteries and in other ways.
If all of this was indeed intended as a comfort statement for miners, last week the GHRA stepped in to remind the government and the public about the cost of uncontrolled mining on the environment, the ecosystem, the Indigenous people and the country as a whole. With reference to all the benefits for miners enumerated in the statement the Association said this did little to encourage responsible action.
And where illegalities were concerned, the GHRA adverted to the fact that a handful of field Mines Officers and Wardens were charged with monitoring an industry involving thousands of claims. In addition to that the penalties for breaches of the regulations did nothing to persuade people to conform to the rules, and that as it was, these needed to be far more severe.
Anyone who has ever been into the mining areas of the interior – and even those peripheral to the mining areas – knows that the GHRA is not exaggerating. Since the majority of our population is based on the coast, and aside from the odd trip to Bartica or Kaieteur Falls, has little or no first-hand acquaintance with what goes on in the hinterland, its members are content to accept the government’s oft-quoted and self-satisfied remark that Guyana has preserved most of its forest intact.
What has been preserved is mostly courtesy of the Amerindians, but some of them are under serious pressure from mining. Where conflicts arise, even when under the 2006 Amerindian Act an Indigenous community has the law on its side, mining interests invariably win out. To quote the Association: “The most severe consequences of the free-for-all in the mining sector are felt by Amerindian communities who have seen their land rights progressively eroded despite the catalogue of Statutes and Regulations that provide a legal defence.”
The scandalous case of Chinese Landing has received a lot of public exposure, as has to a lesser degree, for example, Isseneru and villages in the vicinity of Marudi Mountain. Some communities such as the first-named have had recourse to the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and/or the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. These international agencies insist on the Indigenous right to Free Prior and Informed Consent, a habit not ingrained in the government, which views itself as conferring goodies of one kind or another, not consulting on decisions, never mind if these aid a community or do the opposite.
The problem is that any demographic is seen by the government in electoral terms, and both the miners and the Amerindians are important in their own way in this regard. The difference is that Freedom House thinks it can control the Indigenous population, whereas the miners, who have in the past been seen as a PNCR constituency but are now not necessarily still so, have to be persuaded with ‘benefits’. In addition to this, small and medium-scale mining provides a profitable living for coastlanders who otherwise would possibly be unemployed and therefore potential troublemakers, while gold for its part is an important export commodity.
The PPP’s myopic vision in relation to the interior has caused enormous environmental and ecological damage as described by GHRA. It might be mentioned in this connection that when this newspaper went into the Marudi mining area three years ago, we found that the miners had effectively decapitated Mazoa Mountain, which was close to disappearing from the physical maps of Guyana altogether. But it is not even mountains which are the main problem, according to the Association, since Guyana’s large rivers have become health and safety hazards because of gold mining, while in the case of other rivers their banks and courses have been altered by hydraulic mining.
With the failure to observe several GGMC codes of practice, polluted tailings are spilling into the rivers and creeks in defiance of the law. Then there is the disruption to riverine ecosystems, said the GHRA, with the destruction of habitats and loss of biodiversity, not forgetting the terrible impact of mercury. Various Indigenous communities independently of the Association have complained about how they cannot use the water from their creeks, or eat the fish there.
For its part the Association criticised the government for not doing enough to reduce the incidence and scale of mercury methylation into the environment and food chain, as well as undertake the remedial action the situation merited. It wrote that while regular inspections were required and there were stringent penalties for pollution on the books, these were ignored because of the understaffing at GGMC.
The Association did discuss the restoration of mining sites, describing how a few years ago the GGMC conducted an experiment to find out how much it would cost to restore a mine site on a small scale. The estimate was $6 million, which would have undoubtedly increased today. Yet the obligatory environmental bond for restoration is a “derisory” $100,000.
While as the GHRA has said, the laws and regulations should be enforced and the penalties increased, there is also the need for a massive recruitment drive to hire far more mines officers and wardens; without them nothing will happen. The Association would also like to see environmental neglect and human suffering along with bio-diversity and wildlife loss as a cost which should be added to the profits from gold mining.
While that is probably unlikely to happen, what most people would like to see would be stringent measures enforced to prevent, or in some cases seriously limit the deleterious effects of mining in our hinterland. But before that can happen there would need first to be a major attitudinal change on the part of the ruling party and government, so they come to appreciate that human health, biodiversity and respect for the environment are more important than what in Shakespearean times was called ‘filthy lucre.’ There should be no more miners’ comfort releases emanating from Mr Vickram Bharrat’s Ministry. Instead we look forward to what he is going to say about stopping the violation of our interior.
