Militant small miners say allocation of lands still favours big players
Just over a week after Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman had ‘talked up’ gold-mining syndicates as a potential economic breakthrough for “hundreds of Guyanese men and women,” representatives of nine of the fifteen syndicates already created are demanding a meeting with President David Granger in an effort to break what they say has been a frustrating logjam relating to the distribution of land to syndicates.
The Ministry of Natural Resources has since said that it will be meeting with the syndicates and two other mining groups on September 7 on their grievances.
In stark contrast to gatherings of just months ago of an upbeat group of small miners buoyed by the prospect of being collectively allocated long-awaited mining lands, around fifteen members of nine syndicates gathered at the Girl Guides Pavilion on Tuesday vented their spleen on the Ministry of Natural Resources over what they say has been the imposition of unprecedented limits on lands available to mining syndicates in circumstances where individual large-scale miners control much larger tracts of mining lands. Following several random interjections which threatened to push the meeting out of control the syndicate members told Stabroek Business that they felt that it would require a meeting with President Granger to resolve their concerns.
What now appears to be an unexpected transformation in demeanour by the syndicate members comes just days after Trotman had said in an August 20 keynote address to mark the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission’s Annual Awards Ceremony that through the mining syndicates initiative, government is seeking to ensure that “Guyanese men and women who were either denied access to lands or came under the harsh conditions of a `landlord’ can now band together in a cooperative way and access lands and the synergies and economies that evolve from working together.” He disclosed that fifteen syndicates will be given, “in the first instance, 12,000 acres of land each to give a combined area land of 180,000 acres of (mining) land.” That, however, appeared not to register with the miners some of whom told this newspaper that they felt that they were being frustrated by the Ministry.
At last Tuesday’s meeting, the irate syndicate members were saying that up to this time no syndicate has been assigned any mining lands. They asserted that Trotman’s disclosure regarding land allocation notwithstanding, the available evidence still points to control of the mining sector by individuals described by one miner as “the big players.” One member