Misrepresentation of forestry issues

Feb 03, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
As an employee of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), I must express my disgust at the continuous and childish ranting and raving of Janet Bulkan in her public attacks on the GFC.
If one were to look at her last tirade in the letter columns, SN, January 20, 2009 analysis would show that her arguments are shallow, petty, and filled with inaccuracies.

I spoke to the Senior GFC officials on this, and their response was that it is simply an exercise in futility to respond to Bulkan, since even though they have already, on many occasions, specifically exposed the inaccurate statements made by her and also her love to peddle false information; she still persists in carrying out her agenda.

The GFC seniors indicated, too, that since the general public is already aware of this agenda by Bulkan to discredit the GFC, they will no longer waste precious administrative time to address her poor attempts at publicity and promoting herself as an expert on forestry.

Even as a junior employee of the Commission, I have been given relevant training which enables me to easily calculate basic forest management principles, such as the annual allowable area (AAA) and annual allowable cut (AAC). It is ridiculous, to say the least, that this doctoral candidate does not understand these basic calculations. It is most amusing that, after the GFC published a detailed response outlining all of the calculations in a most simplistic form, she then tries to defend herself by putting forward more illogical arguments.

On the recent attempt to “bad mouth” the GFC and minister, she again is incapable of correctly addressing the issues. The minister and commissioner simply said that Barama was generally complying with the GFC guidelines.

The minister and commissioner have said over and over publicly that, while GFC would support any company going for FSC certification, it is really no concern of the GFC whether Barama is complying with the FSC standards. The National Standards are the GFC guidelines; the FSC standards are not the National Standards, and therefore GFC will not monitor for compliance with the FSC standards.

Whilst on this topic, it would be good for readers to know that the Guyana National Certification process was aborted because of Bulkan and her cohorts, who were only concerned with promoting themselves as experts on social issues rather than taking a nationalistic approach.

It would also give readers a little insight into the character of this person to know that she worked at Iwokrama for many years as a senior researcher. Yet after leaving Iwokrama, she began to bad mouth Iwokrama even to the extent of actively trying to prevent Iwokrama from getting FSC certification. A typical case of biting the hand that fed you. During her long tenure at this place, nothing significant was accomplished.

In her letter, she repeated for the umpteenth time false information about prices that Barama gets for exporting logs from Guyana. Yet the GFC has, time and time again, pointed her to the real market prices as published by the International Tropical Timber Organisation, which match those declared by Barama. Is Bulkan now stating that she is more knowledgeable that the ITTO?

Bulkan paints herself to be a patriot, yet she is discrediting the Forest sector and Commission at every possible opportunity.

I have seen many letters in the press where GFC has invited her to come in and discuss her concerns, but she has never responded to this invitation, because it does not suit her.

I wish her well in 2009 and hope that this New Year will see some amount of decency and real patriotism in her interactions with a vibrant sector of Guyana, one which can do without her misguided negative publicity.
Ajai Persaud
Forest Officer

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