Dear Editor,
Stabroek News article, ‘GGMC defends mining claims for Baishanlin director -says he’s now citizen,’ (April 9), which featured aspects of an internal GGMC report that sparked an uproar, should spur Guyanese to vote in droves on May 11 for the PPP to leave office so the next government can do a forensic review of the Baishanlin deal and a host of others struck by the PPP regime.
We are in the middle of the election campaign and, so far, while the race card is the PPP’s trump card, the most overlooked fact is that instead of running on its record, the PPP is running away from its record, which includes this Baishanlin deal. Going back to mid-last year when news of the Baishanlin shenanigans first broke, Baishanlin appeared to be in the country doing actual logging business despite having only a permit to conduct exploratory studies and not a licence to engage in logging (including exporting logs).
In fact, for a company with only an exploratory permit to conduct an environmental and social assessment study, Baishanlin reportedly imported over 200 heavy duty trucks, 60 bulldozers, 40 loaders and several luxury vehicles for its officials. Aerial and ground level photos published showed huge swaths of lands cleared away by Baishanlin and trucks loaded with loads, with residents in neighbouring communities saying they ran every day several times a day.
According to ‘The truth about the Bai Shan Lin episode,’ (KN, August 24, 2014), Amerindian leaders of communities along the Rewa and Essequibo Rivers in Region Nine began demanding to know the nature, location and scale of proposed logging concessions for Baishanlin, because, unknown to them, the GFC gave the company two state forest permits, one of which affected their communities covering area over 150,000 hectares.
Other regions, including Region 10, appeared also affected by Baishanlin, but it was when Natural Resources Minister, Robert Persaud told a Parliamentary Committee last July that Baishanlin’s claims of having access to close to a million hectares of rainforest was bogus that we realized he was being disingenuous. While he claimed it was more like 640,000 hectares, the truth was that Baishanlin was actually in a working arrangement with four existing Chinese companies that have licences to engage in full-fledged logging, and that would have allowed Baishanlin to actually reach the million hectare mark.
Editor, if it weren’t for someone blowing the lid off the Baishanlin exploitation deal by tipping off Kaieteur News, we probably still would have been in the dark about its questionable operations and even the exact nature of its arrangements struck during the Jagdeo presidency. Likewise, if it weren’t for this recent internal GGMC report being leaked to the public domain, we probably wouldn’t know what we are now learning additionally about Baishanlin, including the fact that one of its directors has become a naturalized Guyanese citizen, even though the first exploratory permit was issued in 2011.
Now, given that the Chinese are known for bringing in their own workers, just how many Chinese workers were brought into Guyana since 2011 to work with Baishanlin alone and how many of them became naturalized citizens? What about the other four Chinese companies Baishanlin is working with, are their Chinese workers naturalized citizens, too? What about all the other Chinese nationals that came on other Chinese-funded or Chinese-built projects, have they returned home or have they achieved naturalized citizenship status? Just how many Chinese nationals have become naturalized citizens the last decade alone?
Every vote against the PPP must translate into a vote against Bharrat Jagdeo, who originally denied he had third term intentions or interest in a constitutional office, but is now on the PPP List, which could allow him to hold a constitutional office as an MP.
Among other things, Mr Jagdeo has to be worried about his overinflated pension package and the gravy train of state contracts for friends and others with no-show projects and poor quality workmanship.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
