A few weeks ago we published an editorial that sought to draw attention to the fact that criminals appeared to be focusing more pointed attention on the mining areas in the interior of Guyana. Since then there have been more indications that this is indeed the case and while it is unclear as to whether there has been any significant police response to the problem, what is unquestionable is that the mining community continues to be concerned about what it clearly believes is an ongoing threat.
The recent particular gruesome killings of two businessmen at Bartica have demonstrated both the ruthlessness of the criminals and the vulnerability of the miners and while the police have made some arrests in connection with that particular crime, the mining community clearly does not have a great deal of confidence in the policing arrangements and have said so. Worryingly, it appears that those concerns have to do with much more than the capacity of the police force to address the problem.
Allegations of members of the security services – both soldiers and policemen – using their authority to perpetrate ‘shakedowns’ in mining communities surface from time to time though these are not the kinds of occurrences which the authorities investigate – and make public the outcomes of their investigations – with any particular degree of fervour. The miners, it appears, have grown accustomed to an uneasy coexistence with the police though, according to Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) Executive Director Edward Shields (in a television interview on Channel 28 Evening News on Tuesday September 28) what it boils down to is a lack of trust among the miners in the “confidentiality” of the police, a remark which clearly suggests that from the perspective of the miners the police are an unreliable ally in the fight against crime.
If this is indeed true – and two other miners with whom we have spoken have unhesitatingly endorsed Mr Shields’ view – it is a pretty damning comment on the integrity of those police officers who serve the mining communities and one that ought to elicit some response from the Commissioner of Police. It does not have to be a public response. It can simply be one that seeks to probe the miners’ concerns as articulated by Mr Shields and, where the assertions are found to have merit, to take remedial action.
The other point Mr Shields made – and he did not have to make this particular point for it to be obvious – is that the miners are living on their nerves and that what keeps them going is the lucrative nature of the gold mining sector.
The relationship between the government and the mining sector may not be particularly good at the moment given moves in the direction of more restrictive mining policies and procedures, however, there is really little doubt that the millions of dollars in royalties from the gold sector that accrue to the public treasury make a particularly healthy contribution to government spending which, we can reasonably assume, will increase significantly in the months ahead. The point about all this is that the government has a vested interest in helping to protect the gold mining sector from criminal attacks and, that being the case, it is the police, principally, that must act on behalf of the government. When, however, the head of the organisation that represents the majority of gold miners, the miners who yield by far the greatest volume of gold says they don’t trust the police, the industry is placed between the proverbial rock and a hard place, a circumstance which the government – for practical, self-interest reasons, among others – cannot ignore.
The government, over time, has demonstrated that it is not particularly keen to have enquiries into issues that are likely to implicate the Guyana Police Force. Of course, whether or not Mr Shields remark about the miners’ concerns over the confidentiality of the police warrants any kind of investigation is really another matter. Assuming that it does, the question that arises is exactly what a transparent enquiry is likely to find and exactly what would be the implications for the already battered image of the Police Force.
Interestingly, the miners have not been given to shouting their concerns from the rooftop – so to speak – and that, perhaps, is why there has been no seemingly robust response to the problem. Instead they have favoured an approach of looking after themselves, recruiting their own security detail and, it seems, in cases where thieves are caught, sometimes exacting their own rough justice. That, as we have said previously, is a dangerous development that has about it characteristics of jungle law.
There is therefore more than one very good reason why the relationship between the miners and the police must improve. It is entirely untenable that the stakeholders in what, currently, is the country’s most productive sector should be apprehensive about the one entity that is perhaps best positioned to protect them against the spate of targeted criminal attacks – the police. It is as much a question of protecting a much-valued sector of the country’s economy as it is a matter of safeguarding life and limb.
Since our last editorial the police have seized a handful of automatic weapons and while there appears to be no clear link between those weapons and the targeting of interior gold mining operations, no definitive assertion can be made to the contrary. After all, it is altogether reasonable to assume that criminal assaults on interior mining locations are, in many cases, planned in areas of coastal Guyana and at other locations situated some distance away from the gold-mining regions of the country.
