Dear Editor,
If Case Timbers Ltd/Unamco had received one tenth of the understanding and kind consideration BaiShanLin receives from GFC, today it would have been, by far, the premier value added producer in Guyana’s forestry sector. Given the extent of the GFC Commissioner’s defence of BSL’s value added non-performance as reported recently in the press, it would seem that BSL enjoys a most favoured company status that locally owned timber concessions can only dream of.
Unlike BSL, CTL/Unamco’s US$50 million sawmill and plywood/veneer mill equipment arrived well ahead of schedule on the GNIC wharf in 1997 only 3 years after CTL/Unamco started operations and a mere 2 years after it built its 74 mile (118 km with 44 bridges and 79 culverts) forest access road and started logging operations in the Upper Berbice area. We were on the way to employing around 2,000 people in Region 10 benefiting a community in the region of 10,000 Guyanese. We had started production of value added products produced at the sawmill and sold to both the domestic and overseas markets. Though CTL/Unamco was unaware of any infractions and innocent of breaking any commitments, rules, or promises made to the previous government, it was clear government was against the project and hostile to the investment. The Jagdeo government was so critical of the investment that at one stage we were even discouraged from paving the 60-mile connecting road between Linden and Kwakwani via Ituni where part of our value added production base was located. The former Prime Minister was well aware of CTL/Unamco’s willingness to pave the Linden/Kwakwani dirt road with help at the time from Aroaima bauxite company but there was no interest much less assistance from the Jagdeo government. It was never to be.
When the Unamco 15-year TSA expired in January 2007, Minister Robert Persaud took 3 long years to partially renew the lease while significantly reducing the forest size. A renewal process should take three days, even three weeks perhaps, but three years is unheard of. The American probe took 2 years to travel to Mars and return to Earth. Three years is an awfully long time to make a routine decision.
During this 36-month hiatus we had no access to the forest so we had to stop logging and value added production which meant reluctantly laying off personnel. While we waited on Minister Persaud’s decision, organized crime stepped in and our heavy forest equipment including bulldozers, skidders, logging and dump trucks, front-end loaders, 4×4 pickups, compactors, motor graders, etc, were either stolen or cut up and removed for scrap metal. All our forest locations were systematically plundered, spare parts and tyres stolen and even zinc sheets removed from the roofs. It was a thorough job done over several days by heavily armed bandits led by a known Lindener. Our security personnel were no match for these AK47 wielding desperados. Commissioner Greene shamelessly informed me that the police could do nothing as the Lindener was an untouchable.
Last year we were able to sell what was left of the US$32 million plymill to Barama for less than US$200,000 to be used as replacement parts. The sawmill still lives.
Whereas BSL is being handled with kid gloves by the GFC, CTL/Unamco was hit on the head with a sledgehammer and for no good reason.
I am confident that the new coalition government will now create a level playing field in the forestry sector and BSL should embrace this development. What happened to the CTL/Unamco investment will not now happen to them.
Yours faithfully,
F Hamley Case
