Small prospectors are the intended beneficiaries of syndicates which are being established across the country, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources which on Wednesday rejected charges by the miners association that there is a divide and rule campaign.
The Guyana Gold and Diamond Ministers Association (GGDMA) has been at sharp odds with the government over new tax impositions in the 2017 budget and other matters. It has threatened to take a number of steps if a satisfactory resolution to its grouses are not arrived at and on Tuesday it accused the ministry of a divide and rule campaign. The organising of syndicates by the ministry has come amid the GGDMA protests.
In a reply on Wednesday to the GGDMA, the ministry said the government recognises the existence of three categories of miners – small, medium and industrial scale and their right to work.
“Given the plethora of applications received from small miners who complained of not having available lands to mine the Ministry of Natural Resources determined to address this need and to organise miners into groups called `Syndicates’ so that they could benefit from the economies of scale that the co-operative effort offers. The Government of Guyana is as pleased to be associated with (the) Syndicates initiative as it is to support the work of the GGDMA and is prepared to meet with all miners to explain its intentions and mediate any tensions that may have arisen by the mistaken interpretation of the role and purpose of its initiatives”, the ministry said.
The ministry said it is committed to working with all miners with the “singular objective being to maximise the recovery and declaration of gold and other mineral resources in an environmentally responsible and safe manner.”
It noted that Minister within the Ministry of Natural Resources, Simona Broomes, has been travelling the country speaking with small miners and encouraging them to form mining syndicates to tap economies of scale and maximise production through a collective effort. It said that it is important to note that Cabinet will soon be advised of the plans for the formal inauguration of the syndicate initiative.
The ministry said that “ it is absolutely not its, nor the Government of Guyana’s, intention to pit miners against each other or to ‘divide and rule’ in any way.
The ministry added that it has during 2016 distributed over 235 blocks of mining lands to small miners and this process will continue through the Closed Area Committee.
In addition, it said that the Ministry and the Government have had several consultative engagements with the GGDMA on the issue of mining concessions and new tax measures for the sector, as recently announced in the 2017 National Budget.
In its statement on Tuesday, the GGDMA said “The Junior Minister (Broomes) has been in her post for approximately one year… [but] before now she had not attempted to establish these syndicates… rather the establishments of these syndicates have specifically coincided with the GGDMA and the GWMO [Guyana Women Miners Organisation] raising our strong concerns regarding the implications of the new tax policies on the sector,” it pointed out. It further argued that “any intelligent persons can see that this is a tactic to divide and rule the miners… a move directly geared at fracturing the small and medium scale mining industry by taking advantage of the crab in a barrel mentality that unfortunately exists in the industry and thereby gaining control over a chunk of a certain scale of miners to support current and future agendas.”
The GGDMA stressed that divisive rhetoric “will only do long term damage to the industry and the relationship between the various scales of miners” and advised these miners to ensure that what they receive is exactly what was promised and that the minister follows through with her commitments.
