Dear Editor,
The Minister of Agriculture (by way of letter to the SN ‘The LCDS will not lead to job losses in the forestry and mining sectors,’ dated January 7) in an incomplete response to my letter captioned ‘Are we pawning our forests because we are desperate for money?’ (SN, January 5) claimed the LCDS would not lead to job losses in the forestry and mining sectors. Any public office holder ought to be fully aware, in this new age of the internet, that the state does not have a monopoly over facts and figures. If this is an attempt on the Minister’s behalf to present the picture that the state is the sole custodian of accurate information, he is wrong. I was very careful about not deviating from the empirical evidence in my last letter, but chose instead to carefully source all pertinent bits of information from official documentation, and thus it is amusing to actually see the Minister revert to his old job by trying his utmost to put a PR spin on a very healthy debate that should be grounded in facts and only facts. But let us deal with the PR spin and public policy commitments made by the Minister.
1. The Minister attempted to portray that I used the word “cease” while alluding to the impact of the environmental laws and the LCDS, on the mining and forestry sectors. In my letter I clearly used the words “disrupt,” “adverse impact on small miners,” and “dislocation of small miners.” Nowhere in the Oxford dictionary do the words disrupt, adverse impact or dislocation translate to cease. Disrupt means to interrupt something; adverse impact means a negative influence on something; and dislocation means to cause changes that spoil the way that thing worked before.
Nowhere in any of the above three sets of words is cessation a predominant factor. I am of the firm belief that even if the Minister and the government wanted the mining and forestry sectors to ‘cease,’ they do not have the constitutional power or economic flexibility to do it. Am I sensing desperation on the part of the administration as the LCDS fritters away as a fully financed alternative to the NDS? What I clearly meant in my previous letter for the Minister’s benefit was that the enforcement of the regulations will disrupt the operations of the small miners and loggers and this will lead to some level of dislocation in the industry. I remain convinced that the medium and large-scale miners and loggers have the technology and expertise to survive the enforcement of the regulations, and thus the impact to them will be minimal. However, one can easily foresee a master of his own destiny (a pork-knocker) becoming a paid servant of a master (employee in a medium and large mining operation) and if this is not adequately mitigated by public policy, the enforcement of the regulations will actively contribute to the degradation of the socio-economic status of the pork-knocker. I call on the Minister to so advise the government by way of a White Paper on these socio-economic issues and provide a recommended menu of measures to facilitate the building of the capacity of the small miners and loggers so that they can comply with the regulations and survive, rather than being displaced because they cannot comply.
The PPP was led by Dr Jagan with its foundation in working class politics, but this impending enforcement of the environmental regulations at such short notice is an indication that the government has strayed very far from its foundation. This policy position by the government can be treated as a provocative case that will contribute to the economic deprivation of the small miners and loggers, while at the same time serving foreign investors and the Guyanese business elite that is closely aligned to the government (case in point, the SN lead story of January 8 ‘Lumumba mining deal raises queries’). The PPP is a working class party and this placed the political responsibility on the government of the day to ensure that it carefully assessed the ramifications of any government policy on the working class and their associated access to income. I remain convinced that the enforcement of these regulations will have measurable adverse impacts on the small miners and loggers, while the medium and large-scale mining companies will flourish as a result of this government policy.
That is why I reinforce my call to the GGDMA to update their database of the names and addresses of persons currently employed in the mining sector so that they can test that database in 12-24 months to assess the adverse impact of this current policy and expose this deception at play.
My time at Queen’s College did not teach me that disruption, adverse impact or dislocation equalled cessation, and thus the Minister’s entire assumption is based on a fallacy. I choose not to humour the Minister on his other misconceptions but to focus on the public commitments he made by way of his letter, since it is my objective to test these commitments in 12-18 months time. This is what the Minister committed to:
1. The LCDS allows for no reduction in the activities of the mining and forestry sectors. The highlight of the mining sector was the production of 305,000 ounces of gold in 2009. Effective analysis would demand an understanding of how much of this was produced by small miners and compare it with their production in 2010 to properly assess if the industry is slowly flushing out the small miners and replacing them with large mining companies. The sector may not decline as a result of the infiltration by the large mining companies, but the risk remains that pork-knockers can become a thing of the past, if their capacity is not built by the GGMC. Is this a good thing for Guyana’s socio-economic progress? Have we thought through how this public policy will feed through in the future as more pork-knockers hit the bread-line?
2. The Minister has committed that he will not be using the Norway money to fund the costs of independent forest monitoring but will seek alternative sources of finance from elsewhere. This is a good thing, especially if the alternative funds are grant monies, since it leaves more of the Norwegian money to do real developmental projects rather than paying consultants. The Minister must insist on a minimum benchmark of how much of the Norwegian funds will be used to build real assets in Guyana as he works to finalise the MoU.
3. The Minister stated, “alternative jobs will be created to complement jobs in the mining and forestry sectors” and by extension the LCDS will not lead to any job losses in these sectors. The Minister remains, however, very economical with the specifics on the alternative employment opportunities that will be created. By now, I suspect the Jagdeo administration would have had a clearly formulated White Paper on the evolution of the mining and forestry sectors and would have mapped out where these jobs will be created, when these jobs will be created, how many jobs are expected to be created, and what types of jobs will be created. Have they studied the sociological impact of taking a pork-knocker from his job in the back-dam and situating him in a 9-5 production line? From what I know of a pork-knocker, if he hits a vein of rock with a high recovery rate, he works as hard as possible even if it means long hours to reap the rich reward. Can you imagine this free spirited man being confined to a production line at a factory? These are the public policy issues that must be properly investigated before we make public policy. In closing let me assure the Minister that I remain hopeful that Guyana will benefit from the Copenhagen monies, since any cash for Guyana, regardless of the leakages, will have some trickle-down effect on the working class and little is better than none in my books. Once the working class is served, I am served.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
