A response to Norman McLean

Jul 22, 2011 Letters

Dear Mr Editor,
I find it strange that Omai made no profit on its operations in Guyana and still continued for all those years. Being a public company and trading on the stock exchange, I wondered what it was telling its shareholders.
While the gold prices were much lower than today, Mc Lean forgot that operational costs were also much lower. In any case, Omai invested knowing what the price of Gold was at the time and I would also want to assume that such an investment was not based on future predictions of where the prices will go, so the company pretty much knew the score before investing.
At any rate, I would prefer to see hard and reliable evidence, if such a thing exists, that Omai made no profit, rather than McLean peddling this information around. I am also not aware that McLean has the necessary financial and technical skills to independently verify such an assertion and maybe just repeating what was being thrown around by his Canadian masters.
With very little checks and balances on Omai’s operations, McLean can tell us anything. Who was there to examine what was produced and what was exported, what royalties were paid and what the treasury got. There was no evidence to suggest that there were proper accountability measure in place to properly monitor this arrangement.
Reliable sources indicated that gold bars were usually flown from the Omai site to Timehri for export and there were no checks by Guyana officials.
Canadian executives also pay no taxes here, given the double taxation agreement, yet they come in and blow their whistle about income taxes that the treasury will get. In most cases this is from local workers.
I like the spin put on the environmental disaster when Cyanide was released into the Essequibo River. The magnitude of this disaster cannot be under estimated and was this a developed country Omai would have paid the price, and may have had to cease operations.
I would like McLean to tell us what compensation Omai provided to those affected. I am sure we all remembered the Exxon case recently in the US and the amount of money that was paid out.
The transfer of skills and HR development is a given in any such investment venture and while it is beneficial, it comes naturally so there is nothing to jump and shout about. These resources are necessary for the company to achieve its objectives and there is no favour granted to anyone.
What about the impact on the health of many of the workers and the resulting impotence of many of the male workers as a result of exposure to hazardous chemicals? I suppose that McLean will tell us that this was beneficial, too, since it was a way of controlling the population of Guyana.
I agree that there is very little tangible net benefit to Guyana from these ventures. Omai has left us with craters in the forest where nothing can grow for in excess of 50 years. While there are monetary benefits in the short term, we fail to examine the longer term impacts and there are many.
Communities are displaced, there is environmental degradation, social ills such as prostitution and child labour as well as the fact that many persons refuse to work for lower wages after these firms leave because there are accustomed to the higher salaries and this can lead to criminal activities.
I am not against foreign investment per se, but there is a need for greater management and accountability of these ventures and I don’t think that Guyana has the necessary skills, resources and commitment to effective engage in these partnerships.
Our ventures are still secret deals like clandestine activities and very little are known and are in the public domain. The recent forestry deal is a typical example. If it wasn’t published in India we would have never know that a large part of our forest was given over to an Indian furniture maker.
Mahadeo Singh

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