Chairman of the Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources Dr Rupert Roopnaraine says he will be seeking to convene a meeting early in January to deal with the issue of the Permission for Geological and Geophysical Survey (PGGS) issued to Muri Brasil Ventures Inc and the answers Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud provided at an earlier meeting when quizzed.
And the APNU is seeking guidance on whether the minister could be made to appear before the Committee of Privileges for what the party termed being “economical with the truth” after he failed to disclose that his ministry had approved the PGGS for mineral exploration that could eventually lead to mining in the ecologically sensitive New River Triangle. He also failed to provide clear answers to the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) which issued a statement saying that it had been misled by the ministry.
Muri Brasil Ventures Inc said in a statement last week that its mining of rare earth elements in the New River Triangle will lead to “unimaginable benefits” to the country. It also justified a troubling clause in the PGGS which guaranteed that the company will be granted up to 18 prospecting licences. It said that such a guarantee was necessary since the company would be spending millions of US dollars in the exploration activities.
Questions have been asked why it was that government sought to pursue a PGGS with this company which was formed only in 2012. Observers have also asked which other company, if any, responded to the advertisement that appeared on March 20, 2012 with a deadline for submissions of March 31, 2012.
Muri’s directors are Dean Hassan and Yucatan Coutinho Reis. Reis had appeared on the PPP/C election platform, and Minister Persaud – the PPP/C Campaign Coordinator for the 2011 elections – did not respond to emailed questions seeking clarification on the matter.
According to Roopnaraine, Persaud said he would be out of the country and as a result, the hearing of the committee cannot be convened until he returns after the holidays. “We will have a meeting in January to have full disclosure on all matters,” said Roopnaraine.
From January 1, 2014, the chairmanship of the committee will change and according to Roopnaraine, PPP/C MP Odinga Lumumba will be the new chairman. Roopnaraine does not foresee a change in the line of questioning to the minister.
“The way the committee has been working will be continued,” he said. “[The change in the chairmanship] should not be a problem.”
He said Lumumba has a keen interest in the matter and that it should not matter that he is a member of the government side. “I anticipate that there will be continuity in the work of the committee,” he said.
Speaking to Stabroek News, committee member Joe Harmon said he has asked for the committee to have another hearing to examine the issue in greater detail. “…Chairman of that committee Dr Roopnaraine is making efforts to get the all of the parties to agree on a suitable date for the meeting. The minister has indicated that he will be out of the country for some period and therefore we have to work now with his schedule,” he said.
“The question I have now though is the chairmanship of the committee changes at the end of this year. While I do not question the competence of Mr Odinga Lumumba to chair these sessions, I believe that the exchanges we have had with the committee on this matter and the attitude that he took even as a member of the committee leave me with the fear that we might not have the rigorous kind of questioning we had up to now,” Harmon said.
He said he had this fear because during the last meeting Lumumba tried to limit the kind of questioning being put to the minister. He said that even in cases where officials from the agencies under the ministry were willing to answer questions put to them by members of the committee, Lumumba was trying to steer them away from addressing the questions.
“So I will have to be more cautious in my optimism now in getting the kinds of answers from the minister because the dynamics in the committee will change at the end of this year and that is why I was trying to press for it to happen before the end of this year,” said Harmon.
“In any event, the minister has given an undertaking to the committee that by January 14 he will provide certain information,” he said.
On whether the minister lied or withheld information from the committee, Harmon said that the committee is examining whether the minister could be sanctioned and what form the sanction will take. “The rules of the National Assembly are very restricted on whether you can take a member to the Committee of Privileges for lying to a committee. That is something that we are looking at very closely to see whether it qualifies for the Committee of Privileges,” he said.
“The procedure which we have will require the Speaker to determine whether it is an issue fit for the Committee of Privileges,” he said. “That is the direction we intend to take but we are examining it very closely,” he said.
Harmon is concerned with the silence of former president Bharrat Jagdeo, the architect of the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and global campaigner for green energy and for forested countries to be compensated for keeping their forests intact.
“Since this Muri Brasil Ventures Inc matter came up and that had to do with the granting of leases, licences, permissions, surveys and all of these things, we have not heard a word from President Jagdeo. He has been a champion of the Low Carbon Development Strategy. He has been an ambassador on living green. And in the face of all of this, while President Jagdeo is travelling the world and preaching this question of going green, right here in Guyana we are in a mess and he is saying nothing about it,” said Harmon.
“We have violated significant aspects of the agreement which we have with the Kingdom of Norway. The minister has said that we are in danger of losing this money,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that the US$20 million which should come from Norway as part of the agreement because of the level of deforestation which has taken place way above that which is acceptable under the agreement.”
He believes that Jagdeo has used the whole LCDS idea to “feather his nest” on the backs of this country. “This whole LCDS was a platform for him to move off and become internationally recognised at all of these universities that are giving him doctor this and doctor that,” said Harmon. “But the reality here in Guyana is that the streets of this country are flooded – Georgetown, East Coast, West Coast, all over the place. So we are having these issues as they relate not only to climate change but also the way in which we manage waste and we are not having a word from the Champion of the Earth,” he said. “This is where he has to make his mark. He has bequeathed onto us a Low Carbon Development Strategy and therefore he must be seen as championing it in his own country, not at the United Nations and all around the world,” Harmon said.
“You don’t hear the government talking about it anymore. When last you heard somebody talking about the green economy,” he asked. “Everybody now wants to get into mining because that is where the money is,” he surmised. “That is the point I made to the minister in the committee meeting – that there is in my mind a conflict which exists between our requirements and obligations under the Norway agreement to preserve the forests in a pristine condition and at the same time mining which would require damaging that said forest. And it seems to me that the emphasis is on mining,” he said.
He said the attitude of the government is as if it has abandoned the LCDS. “They haven’t said so in writing but the attitude of the government, the behaviour of the ministers made it clear to me that this was just an avenue to project some people’s ego,” he said.
