Dear Editor,
I refer to Christopher Ram’s letter of April 11 in SN, captioned ‘Serious questions remain about the LCDS including the wisdom of putting Norway funds into the Amaila project.’
In his letter, Mr Ram makes several points to justify his claim that the government is “intolerant of independent voices and critical views,” and he bemoans a lack of “openness, transparency and accountability.”
This is in line with views on the LCDS and the Amaila project previously expressed by Mr Ram and Dr Janette Bulkan, to whose inputs Mr Ram increasingly defers.
This government wholeheartedly defends Mr Ram’s and Dr Bulkan’s right to express their views critically and independently. Ours is a free society, where everyone is entitled to say what they wish, within the law. This includes people who live in Guyana, like Mr Ram, and those who live overseas, like Dr Bulkan. But just because people are free to express their views does not mean that those views deserve to be treated as relevant.
If Mr Ram and Dr Bulkan want to move from the periphery of public discourse and onto ground where they will be respected by governments, civil society and international organisations, then they need to start getting their facts right.
Precisely because of the transparency that Mr Ram and Dr Bulkan claim to value, there is publicly available information on all of the matters that they have raised in their recent letters.
But instead of using this transparently available information, Mr Ram and Dr Bulkan use invented or out-of-date materials to justify their views. One very important example of this is the main topic of Mr Ram’s recent letter on the Amaila Falls Hydro Power project.
Mr Ram and Dr Bulkan (as well as Mr Ramjattan and others) claimed in a letter to Norwegian Minister Erik Solheim that the only justification for the Amaila Hydro Power project was a one-and-a-half page entry in the LCDS. This is ludicrous – the 2011 Amaila Falls Environmental and Social Impact Assessment update alone is 2,500 pages. It sets out comprehensive information about the proposed project, explains the consultative process – and is transparently available at www.amailahydropower.com. Did Dr Bulkan, Mr Ram and Mr Ramjattan really expect to be treated seriously when they omitted such basic information?
But the missive from Mr Ram proves that he doesn’t even understand the basics of what is being proposed for Amaila Falls. Speci-fically:
* He repeatedly claims that the Amaila Falls Hydro Power project is being built by Mr Fip Motillal and Synergy Holdings. This is not true – the project is being built by the Sithe Global group of companies.
* He states that the government is putting public funds into “a joint venture with and controlled by Mr Motillal.” This is pure fiction. Mr Motillal is constructing a road, for which he will be paid in accordance with his contract, which was awarded after an open tender process in accordance with the Procurement Act. After that point, he will have no involvement whatsoever with the hydro plant.
These facts have been set out countless times by the government and the project developers – and on the Amaila Falls website, where the ESIA update clearly explains the relationship between the government-funded access road to Guyana, and the public-private hydro power project for the plant itself and related electrical inter-connectors.
Dr Bulkan and Mr Ram are also wildly misinformed when it comes to the LCDS, the Guyana-Norway partnership, and the international REDD+ agenda (for example Mr Ram’s claim that Amerindian land titling has nothing to do with low carbon development). Yet, all the relevant information concerning these matters are also transparently available at www.lcds.gov.gy.
If Dr Bulkan and Mr Ram do not read, or cannot understand, these materials, that does not stop them from having the right to comment.
But it does diminish the likelihood of anyone treating them seriously.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Luncheon
Head Presidential Secretariat
