Mining syndicates muddle?

The gold mining sector is fraught with challenges, complexities and complications. Some of the critical ones have to do with the significant investments and major business risks that investors in the sector take; there is, too, the disparity between the returns that accrue to successful miners and those who must work long and hard for lesser reward. Then there are the safety and health and environmental considerations, which, on the basis of the prevailing overwhelming evidence, are too often cast aside by some miners in their single-minded search for gold. The sector has also thrown up numerous instances of official corruption involving miners and would-be miners and state officials responsible for the administration of the sector. The mining sector, as was mentioned earlier, is indeed a complex entity.

We learnt recently of the decision by the Government of Guyana to allow for the creation of mining syndicates, groups of mostly small miners who would be allowed to collectively apply for and be granted mining claims and would be able to ‘work’ those claims within the framework of the rules governing the sector. Interestingly, the arrangement allows for syndicates to benefit from the same concessions offered to miners associated with the Guyana Gold & Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA). Syndicates are deemed to be a positive development for a number of reasons not least the fact that – as far as we are told – they are intended to strike a more equitable balance between the ‘big players’ in the sector and the smaller operators, allowing the latter group to have access to collective claims of their own. Syndicates, it is felt, will help to reduce the practice of illegal raiding and go some way towards eradicating what has been described as ‘landlordism,’ loose and insecure ‘contractual’ arrangements which small miners have with large claim holders and which leave them vulnerable and dependent.

News of the emergence of syndicates has also come with salutary public pronouncements about their worthwhile nature from the Ministry of Natural Resources. They have been touted as one of the mechanisms that can contribute to the Government of Guyana’s ‘good life’ promise. Contextually, syndicates are open not only to persons traditionally associated with the sector so that, for example, a group from Albouystown has created a syndicate. On the whole mining syndicates appeared to have secured the blessings of the authorities and – apparently against expectations in some quarters ‒ the initiative has even secured the bless-

ings of the GGDMA. Indeed, it appeared set to go without hindrance or hiccup.

Of course, with new groups of miners becoming part of the sector there are additional responsibilities that arise out of what will become more weighty environmental and safety and health challenges, and one notes that the Ministry of Natural Resources has provided assurances that the advent of syndicates will be attended by initiatives designed to ensure that the syndicates live within the limits of the law, including collaborative undertakings involving the syndicates and the ministry’s Mining School.

But then (as was mentioned earlier) the gold mining industry in Guyana is far from uncomplicated and now, as far as we are told, progress in relation to the allocation of mining lands has not been unfolding at the anticipated pace and some of the blame for this is being placed at the door of the cumbersome bureaucracy of the GGMC. There is, too, the matter of the official refusal to deny permission for a syndicate known as the Berbice Mining Syndicate to mine lands at Parish Peak in Upper Berbice. The land, the syndicate was reportedly told, has been set aside for conservation.

All of this appears to have given rise to a strained relationship between the Ministry of Natural Resources and the newly formed National Mining Syndicate. What appears to have been the ‘high’ that had attended some of the earlier meetings to craft a strategy for the unfolding of the syndicate initiative, now appears to have been stymied by bureaucratic sloth and heaven knows what else.

The problems as they have been represented appear to have been entirely avoidable and could, arguably, have been averted by more thorough prior consultation between the Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Mining Syndicate. The critical point here, however, has to do with the need to remedy the problem with the utmost haste. After all, syndicates are envisaged as an initiative designed to help kickstart the government’s ‘good life’ undertaking, aren’t they?