Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:51 AM
Jan 31, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The first crack in the local bourgeoisie class has emerged.
This fault line has appeared because of the pressures caused by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of Guyana and Norway which has had the implication of forcing the government to ensure that continuing economic activity in the mining sector is done without ravaging the environment.
Elements within the mining sector are alarmed about certain measures which they will be forced to adopt as a result of these regulations.
Some of them are raising a hue and cry, even threatening to shut down a town, but not their dredges, over the proposed plans which will cause them to do things which they ought as responsible investors to have been doing in the first place.
Long ago, pork knockers used to go into the interior and with their batel and sieve to prospect for gold. Very little environmental degradation resulted from porkknocking.
Today, technology has grown, and with it the possibilities of mass environmental destruction.
Large tracts of forests are chopped down, the land is leveled and huge pits are dug into which huge pumps are used to wash and filter the soil and thence extract the gold.
These pits are supposed to be filled after the operations are completed, but as we have seen in many instances, some miners simply abandon the area without filling the pits, resulting in environmental degradation.
In many instances the trees cut down are never replanted. An overflight of much of Guyana will reveal numerous patches of forest clearings.
Low carbon development or no low carbon development, these environmentally unsound practices have to be rooted out. If they are allowed to continue within the next twenty years, there would be limited forest cover in the mining areas of Guyana and this country would face an environmental catastrophe.
While all that has been signed with the Norwegian government is a Memorandum of Understanding, committing to general principles, the government knows that the mapping of our forests which is to take place under that agreement will expose the wanton destruction taking place as a result of mining activities.
This will ultimately jeopardize the huge sums that the Norwegians have committed to Guyana.
The government therefore has committed itself to reversing some of these environmentally destructive mining practices and is no doubt insisting on certain things such as the replanting of trees by the miners.
The new proposals carry a cost to miners and they are therefore up in arms over the proposals and are now using their wealth to try to reverse what the government is proposing.
Given the influence of this class over all administrations in this country, we may very well end up with the government having to buckle under pressure and compromise.
This would be unfortunate because the environmental degradation which occurs in this country carries an environmental cost which has to be borne by someone, if not by future generations.
Over the past one hundred and fifty years, billions of ounces of gold have been extracted from our country. Where is that wealth today?
How has it impacted on the lives of the average citizen? How is it we can boast about our mineral resources, yet allow a small group of miners to plunder the resources of this country, when the vast majority of the population will see little benefit from the extraction of these resources?
This is why the present imbroglio between a small group of miners and the government over proposed regulations must not be allowed to jeopardize the environmental future of this country.
Even if there was no low carbon development strategy, there would have come a time when manners had to be brought down on the mining sector.
A confrontation is brewing and this confrontation has nothing to do with the working class. The working class should not get involved because this is a confrontation within the propertied class of Guyana which has always held the government under its wings. It is a matter between the government and the bourgeoisie class that controls the administration.
It is too much to expect the government to crackdown on the mining sector.
It is too much to expect the government to move against the bouregiouse class. It is too much to expect the government to take away large and medium scale concessions from the rich and give them to small miners.
That is not going to happen and therefore this dispute should be of no concern to the working class. It is not their fight.
The government has a problem with its friends, and it will most likely settle this dispute in a manner that would guarantee that the propertied class is compensated for any burden it has to face as a result of new environmental regulations.
It will thus most likely capitulate and ask that class to agree to watered-down regulations in return for a greater share of the proposed sums that the Norwegians will provide.
This is how the politics in Guyana will always pan out when it comes to the interest of the propertied class.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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