Dear Editor,
Please permit the Chinese Landing Village Council to reply to the letter by Mr Wayne Vieira which appeared in the Stabroek News of August 7, 2013 in which he made a number of unfounded allegations about the Village Council and Amerindians of the village (‘The Amerindians are mining illegally at Chinese Landing’).
The Council wishes to highlight the fact that Chinese Landing has been a titled Amerindian Village since 1976 which is confirmed by the formal title it received in October 1991 which expressly states that the grant was “with effect from 24th April, 1976.”
When the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) auctioned the four medium-scale mining permits to Wayne Vieira in 1995 on Chinese Landing titled land, they did so without any consultation and obviously without the consent of the Council and village. Further, the Mining Act at section 112 states “for the purposes of this Act, all land occupied or used by Amerindian communities and all land necessary for the quiet enjoyment by the Amerindians of any Amerindian settlements, shall be deemed to be lawfully occupied by them.” Therefore, in auctioning these blocks to Vieira the GGMC was acting in gross violation of the Mining Act and laws protecting the rights of Amerindians.
The Council wishes to make it very clear that the Amerindians of Chinese Landing own thirteen registered dredges which they operate on their titled village lands and these are the affordable Chinese made engines which are nowhere near the cost that Vieira states in his letter.
Most importantly the villagers sell their gold to the Guyana Gold Board. We believe that we have the right to earn an honest income like all other Guyanese and that is why we work hard and honestly to provide for ourselves and families.
We would like to remind Mr Vieira that when he was on our titled village lands without any agreement with the Village Council as required by the Amerindian Act 2006, the Amerindians were reduced to ‘punting,’ meaning all we could do was wash the ‘backsand’ from his operations using batel and pickaxe. We earned next to nothing while he got the lion’s share. It is obvious he would like that unfair situation to remain.
We would also wish to say that at no time were there forty dredges on the village lands as Mr Vieira alleges, because we were not allowed since he had a contract with a Canadian-based mining company which was conducting mining exploration.
Perhaps Mr Vieira would like to let the public know how much he was paid for selling his mining rights to that company and never paid even the seven per cent to the Village Council as required by the Amerindian Act.
The Council wishes to highlight that the cease work orders issued by the GGMC officers refer to persons operating on state land. We would like Mr Vieira, GGMC and the public to know that where our villagers work is titled Amerindian village lands and rightfully belongs to us. There is no exception to our title.
We do not wish to go again into all the details of exploitation, intimidation and abuse during a period we do not want to experience again, except to say that we the villagers were witness to this. We will remind Mr Vieira of the time when he came to the village and told the village to take five hundred thousand dollars and demanded that we sign an agreement with him or else the village would get no royalty from him. We rejected that then and will always reject anything that is meant to insult us.
We the Council and village say that gone are the days when we the Amerindians will sit quietly and accept whatever is given to us. We will do all we have to within the law and with the strength given to us by our ancestors to secure our livelihood for our people today and for generations to come.
Yours faithfully.
Pirite Miller
Toshao
for Chinese Landing
Village Council
