After several months of agony and public humiliation in trying to retrieve money she was owed from a mining claim she had leased to a family friend, a Bartica mother was yesterday paid in full following the intervention of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
“I want to really thank the ministry and especially [Minister] Simona [Broomes] because I ain’t have it easy, I tell you,” Sharon Mars told Stabroek News yesterday after receiving the $996,040, owed to her.
This newspaper understands that Mars’ debtor only paid the money when he realized that he would not be granted the duty-free mining concessions he had applied for at the Ministry of Natural Resources.
“Miners will not get away with these kinds of things and then still come and receive all the benefits that government has to offer. We cannot force them… But simply we have the policy set that with matters like these, duty free, well we don’t owe it to them. We have means and ways in saying you are not eligible,” Minister within the Ministry of Natural Resources Simona Broomes said while the money was handed over to Mars yesterday.
“I hope we don’t have to go down this road with all the miners and that they will comply and we have that kind of respect,” she added.
Mars’ plight was highlighted at a meeting held for small miners at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, in January.
There, she told of the struggle she has endured as a woman in a field dominated by men, in trying to obtain money owed to her for mining land she had rented to someone she trusted.
When she approached the lessee, she was verbally abused and told to take the matter to court as she won’t be paid.
She then sought the intervention of Broomes and her debtor openly humiliated and abused her again telling her, among other things, that she was a burden to him and “had weights” on her.
“I cried when he openly said to me that I get weights on me. I de so hurt. It proper hurt you know, because [name given] was like family to me and I know his family and they know me and them kinda thing,” she told this newspaper.
She had told her story at the Miners’ Conference about how embarrassed she felt being called names by the man who owed her, and was even laughed at openly there.
However, Broomes who was the moderator during the interactive session, called on the public to take a stand against the verbal abuse meted out to persons and stressed that being taunted was “not a laughing matter.” Mars has survived many adversities in her 52 years of life and is still going through much more. In 2008, her husband, a dredge owner who owned the mining claims she had leased, was shot dead at point blank range at his mining camp by an aggrieved ex-employee.
Then in 2014, the eldest of her six children, was held and subsequently charged, along with four others with the murder of an East Coast Demerara businessman.
One year later, he was diagnosed with chronic renal disease and was hospitalized. He remains there undergoing weekly kidney dialysis, treatment that has taken a toll on his mother emotionally, physically and financially. “It is not easy to look at your child in that state and knowing you have to do everything for him.. Look now, I just finish at the hospital and my feet so tired but I have to go on…,” she lamented.
Mars said she had believed she would have received her due from the man who rented her claims because he had first-hand insight into her woes.
However, after chasing after and pleading with him for many months to no avail, she is happy that the Ministry of Natural Resources intervened and she has been paid.
She pointed out that she holds no ill will against her debtor and she was just trying to move along with getting her own life and that of her 20-member family unit in order. “That was disrespectful to a woman…” she said, adding, “I want to thank him for giving me my money and no matter what he said I forgive he for what he tell me and suh. … He is like a lil family.. .1 can’t hold nothing against he.”
