Chinese Company accused of destroying livelihood of Port Kaituma residents

Dec 12, 2021 News

By Shervin Belgrave

Kaieteur News – Residents of Port Kaituma, Region One, are accusing the Guyana Manganese Inc. (GMI), a 100 percent owned Chinese company, of destroying their livelihood.
GMI is extracting manganese from its mining pits located at Matthews Ridge another Region One community located more than 47km away from Port Kaituma.
However, for the company to ship the mineral out of Guyana it must first transport it to Port Kaituma. There it is stored and then loaded on barges towed by tugs for transport out of the community via a river.

The farmer’s house and farm surrounded by a huge wall of manganese.

Recently this media house visited both Port Kaituma and Mathews Ridge and was granted the opportunity to meet with the residents and listen to their concerns.
Among their concerns was the devastating environmental impact the Chinese company’s operation is having on their community and also their livelihood. Kaieteur News had in the past reported that the GMI’s operation had caused massive flooding in Mathews Ridge and even contaminated the community’s water supply.
During this entity’s recent visit, it was revealed that GMI’s operation not only affects residents of Matthews Ridge but also those living in Port Kaituma.
Apart from damaging the roads that the government is spending millions to maintain, Port Kaituma residents said that farmers are being affected by the company’s operations in the Oronoque area.
Oronoque is a community within Port Kaituma where the company stores the mineral before shipment.
They said that the affected farmers would complain at every community meeting of the impact the company’s operation is having on their farms but it seems like the Chairmen and those responsible for representing them might be covering up or downplaying the issue.
One of the affected farmers, Peter Daniels, 52, was willing to share his story with this newspaper.
Daniels has been living in Oronoque for almost four years now and has been depending on a farm he had set up there
The farmer related that he had been living peacefully for most of those years with his five children and wife until GMI began to surround his house and farm with manganese.
He recalled that the company began storing the mineral in front of his property on March 10, 2021. In a matter of weeks, added the man, his entire farm and home was surrounded by a high hill of manganese.
“In the dry season, the dust of the manganese would get blown into my house and it would affect the little children living in the house,” he told Kaieteur News.
When the

Peter Daniels on camera explaining the impact the company’s operation is having on his livelihood.

rain falls, he continued, the mineral would get washed into his farm and kill all of his plants. Daniels said that he has been clamouring for assistance but no one seems to be listening to him.
He claimed that he requested from officials of the Matarkai Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) including the Chairman to let the company remove the manganese from around his property and store it somewhere else.
Daniels had even suggested that if the company can’t do that then he would like for them to relocate him to another area where he can be able to provide for his family.
Despite his pleas to the local government officials for help, the farmer said it seems as though the authorities have turned a blind eye to the issue affecting him and all he would receive is empty promises.
According to his daughter, Daniels had recently benefitted from flood relief cash grant provided by the government and invested that money in ‘cutting a new farm”.
The Chinese company, however, continued to store their manganese around his property and the pile has gotten higher and larger destroying that farm too.
Driven by frustration he decided to complain to the Chairman representing his Oronoque community but was disappointed when she told him that there is nothing that she could do to help because “the government has given all of the land to the Chinese.”
The only glimmer of hope he had was when an overseer of the village decided to intervene. Daniels recounted that the overseer had attempted to stop the company’s trucks from ‘imprisoning’ him with manganese.
However, the company disregarded and ignored the overseer’s instruction and continued its operations unbothered. “The overseer been put a stopping to them but the trucks were still coming in although he stopped them,” said the farmer.

Peter Daniels showing a Kaieteur News reporter the watermarks running into his farm from the manganese pile.

Daniel’s said the overseer took some photographs to highlight the company’s disrespect for locals and had promised to publish them on the internet.
The overseer has since left the area and to date, Daniels said, he has not gotten any feedback from the individual nor has he seen anything published on the internet.
Worried that his livelihood will be lost and he would be left without an income to take care of his family, Daniels has decided to go public and even recorded a video to highlight the problem he is facing, as a result of the company’s operations.
In the video Daniels pointed to the pile of manganese surrounding his home and said, “Yes this is the manganese that affecting me. I don’t have anything else to depend on because the li’l thing in the farm getting damaged. The manganese is affecting all of the plants and right now I don’t know what to do. I called on the chair and she seh ‘I can’t do anything because the land give over to the Chinese’. So I don’t know what more to do.
They (referring to the chairman) are supposed to look into this matter because I am a farmer. I live off of my farm and I have nuff children to mine and at this time it very difficult now to get a farm going again. So if I could get any assistance and help I would be very grateful. I will be glad if the manganese could be removed. I have a lot of small children and like it affecting them also.”
Kaieteur News in August had reported that manganese operations can prove to be dangerous to the environment. According to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) conducted for the ongoing operations in Region One, it was detailed that apart from the destruction of ecosystems and habitats, manganese contamination in the domestic water supply is likely and the health impacts for those affected are grave.
GMI had entered Mathews Ridge by purchasing four prospecting licences from Reunion Manganese Inc., a Canadian company that covers a total area of 45,729 acres in 2016. In 2018 it began setting up operations and had recently started extracting the mineral.
The total manganese resource in Matthews Ridge is some 26 million tonnes, however as it relates to the deal Guyana has signed with the company for the mineral, the populace is still in the dark.