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Guyana Forestry Commission responds to Kaieteur News
Dear Editor,
I write on behalf of the Guyana Forestry Commission in response to your article dated October 24, 2018 written by Ms. Kiana Wilbur and titled ‘Audit reveals over 1900 breaches of forestry regulations in three years”.
Firstly, I would like to point out that the information presented in the article was taken in its entirety from the GFC’s website: since that fact was buried in the article, readers might wrongly believe that the reporter had uncovered something we were trying to hide.
Secondly, the GFC held a press briefing on October 5 so that members of the press could “interrogate the Commission on our work to date.” I was disappointed that no one from your newspaper was present and I took the time afterwards to speak to Mr. Gildharie and inquire the reasons for Kaieteur’s absence given your long history of covering the GFC and forest concessions. He explained why no one from KN was present and we agreed to send him our statements and directed him to our website. An article that spoke to the content of the press briefing was published in KN on October 6.
You can therefore imagine my surprise and disappointment that your article (Ms. Wilburg’s) of October 24 sensationalized and cherry picked information from our website. We at GFC have received many inquiries since the front page of your newspaper emblazoned the “news” of the 1900 infractions. I hope this letter offers your writer and the general public some context. For the benefit of readers I am reproducing the following table, which was included in the article:
This table presents a year by year due diligence report for the extraction and transportation of some 563,626 trees and about 180 million board feet of processed lumber for the three (3) year period, representing production from approximately 550 logging operators, in excess of 250 saw millers, and 300 lumberyards across Guyana, and employing some 21,000 people.
Of the stated 1900 infractions, 1419 were the result of late submission of permits (the regulations require that permits be submitted within 24hrs of delivery of forest produce), which the GFC attributes, in the main, to the poor conditions of interior roads. The remaining “infractions” under the heading of removal permits, represents .oo89% of the total number of permits issued over the three year period. It is noteworthy that even bar code scanners used in convenience stores in developed societies have a two percent margin of error and they are utilized under a more controlled environment as compared to the four million hectares of state forest that the GFC monitors.
The external independent monitoring report by Soil Association Certification Ltd., a UK based firm, states in its conclusion that “… Guyana has a strong and well implemented system” and that “… illegal activities in Guyana’s forestry sector and the rate of deforestation and degradation are low compared with other International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) producer member countries”. We take pride in the fact that the report concludes that, “Guyana’s forest sector is one of the better managed in the world.” We do acknowledge, however, that improvements recommended would make our system more robust and it is our intention to lessen paperwork and to continue to work toward an even better compliance with our regulations.
The GFC is like all state institutions responsible to all Guyanese and has worked consistently under my Chairmanship to have an open door policy especially to reporters. We have benefitted, as I believe all Guyana has, from your unrelenting attention to wrongs in the sector. We expect the public and the media to continue to hold the GFC accountable. I would like to make it clear that this letter is not questioning the right of your reporter to criticize and/or point out failures; rather, it is the deliberate attempt to skew the facts that has disappointed me and more importantly, distressed the staff and departments who have worked so hard to produce the ‘’ the no corrective measures ‘’ in our last monitoring report, as can be seen in the very same website: www.forestry.gov.gy.
Best regards
Jocelyn Dow
Chairperson GFC
Editor’s Note: Our reporter Ms. Wilburg has stated that the information she used was not taken from GFC’s website, and there was no “deliberate attempt on her part to “ skew the facts.”
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