Latest update March 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 25, 2016 Letters
Dear Editor;
May I respond to the query from Carlos DeBarros (Snr) in his letter ‘The worst performance of the forestry sector in 20 years’ (KN, 22 October 2016)? Snr DeBarros calls for A PLAN. There is a plan, and indeed the national forest policy has backed the plan since 1997, then discussed and approved by the National Assembly. Unfortunately, the policy and plan have not been put into action during the nearly 20 years since 1997. Why not? It is a fair question for the GFC Boards of Directors appointed annually by the responsible Minister.
Readers may remember that I have been trying since 2007 to bring the not- so- straightforward Chinese transnational, Bai Shan Lin into line, in letters and articles in this and other newspapers. The company and its subsidiaries have repeatedly broken the laws of Guyana. In a few instances, the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) has imposed penalties. Mostly, however, the GFC and the Guyana Revenue Authority colluded in the law breaking, and allowed the transnational, partly owned by the Government of China, to build up relatively large unpaid debts and yet at the same time receive large tax benefits from the Guyanese tax payer through the GRA.
Only with great delay has the GFC finally rescinded the logging concessions acquired and held illegally by Bai Shan Lin, and the pre-logging concessions held legally but not operated according to law.
Mr DeBarros (Snr) should be asking:
What are the responsible government officials doing to recover the debts?
What are the responsible government officials doing about the repeated and massive Customs frauds?
What of the documentary evidence and the signatures of those responsible for the two decades of wrongdoing? All excised from the files?
Mr DeBarros (Snr) may suppose that the current state of the forest sector is a new and unexpected situation. It is not. The decline of the sector has been concealed only by repeated law-breaking, ignoring policy, and unsustainable logging, including of the iconic greenheart.
There is no point in producing yet more policies and plans if the GFC is allowed to continue its two decades of not putting into action both policy and plan. A Forest Ranger might be expected to understand the reasons for forest management, why the need for species-specific harvesting rules and the need to maximise the returns from Nature’s Bounty by wood processing industries. If a Forest Ranger does not understand, then he will be serially disappointed by the continuing localised extinction of Guyana’s iconic species and our much-degraded forest.
Janette Bulkan
Listen to the man that is throwing Guyanese bright future away
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