Dear Editor,
Kaieteur News on 13 April reported, ‘ExxonMobil, EPA a no-show again at Natural Resources Parliamentary meeting’
(https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2024/04/13/exxonmobil-epa-a-no-show-again-at-natural-resources-parliamentary-meeting/). Through your pages, I call on our elected parliamentarians and staff of the National Assembly to use the legal procedures to require both ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) and the EPA to obey the law of the land.
Standing Order 86 (The Sectoral Committees) (5) (d) empowers the Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources to summon witnesses –
‘(d) summon persons to give evidence in accordance with the Legislative Bodies (Evidence) Act Chapter 1:08 of the Laws of Guyana’
Section 5 of that law empowers the National Assembly to use the power of arrest –
‘5. If any person summoned to attend as a witness before a legislative body, refuses or neglects, without sufficient cause, to attend at the time and place mentioned in the summons, that body may issue a warrant in Form 2 in the Schedule, or in any other form the circumstances require, signed by the person carrying out the functions of secretary to the body, authorising and directing the Registrar or any marshal to arrest that person and detain him in custody until he can be brought before the legislative body.’
Every time that the EPA or EMGL breaks the laws and legal procedures which apply to everyone else in Guyana, our country sinks further into national and international disdain and disrepute. I call on the members of the National Assembly to straighten their collective spines, and to respect and enforce national law.
Yours truly,
Janette Bulkan
