Latest update February 22nd, 2025 5:49 AM
Feb 27, 2012 News
– welcomes Manganese mining company in area
Leader of the Opposition, Brigadier David Granger has expressed disappointment at the snail’s pace of development in Region One, which is bigger than Trinidad and Tobago but does not even have a commercial bank.
These sentiments were shared at the headquarters of Reunion Manganese Inc. (RMI) in Matthews Ridge, Region One on Friday where several prominent personalities visited the company to receive a firsthand account of the mineral company’s operations.
“We have a situation where the grass is growing and the horse is starving.” Granger said.
He said A Partnership of National Unity welcomes the resurrection of the Manganese Mining Company.
Adding that there are serious deficiencies of skills and education in Region One, Granger observed that of the 15 geologists employed at Reunion Manganese, only two are Guyanese. The Opposition leader also spoke of the issues facing the national university which is supposed to be generating the requisite skills needed for the various fields in the mining sectors and other technical areas.
“The University is being strangled for funds and being incapable of producing the types of technicians needed to develop the mineral sectors such as bauxite, manganese, gold and diamond and to develop our timber and natural resources.”
Adding that this is not just an opportunity to produce manganese, Granger said a holistic approach is needed in developing each sector while also looking at the education and employment systems in place for the development of resources and people of Guyana.
In rebuttal, Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud said the government is moving to the next stage of developing a mining school because of the demand in mining activities.
“Government is pushing for the establishment of the mining school….we have started work with our partners in Canada in terms of establishing this in Linden at the Technical Institute…we are also looking at the facility at Omai for the practical demonstration aspect…so we want to start training our miners in a way so that they can better perform their activities,” Minister Persaud said.
“We want to work with the small miners, giving them the capacity so that they can be engaged in their livelihood in an environmentally friendly way.”
In addition, he said Government has been looking at new technologies for the mining industry, so that miners can have better recovery of minerals, while putting less pressure on the environment.
While the manganese operation is slowly taking off, the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) in Region One has expressed concern that the RDC’s involvement in the project is limited. This has led to some misinformation being peddled in the area, leaving residents very uneasy.
To this end, the Minister called on the RMI to reach out to the local government body and bring the community onboard. He reminded that, “at the end of the day it’s about Guyana and all Guyanese benefitting from projects such as this.”
This call was reinforced by Minister within the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Norman Whittaker, who emphasised the need for an open line of communication between the community and the manganese company to be maintained.
The Matthews Ridge manganese project is located in northwest Guyana, in and around the former Matthews Ridge and Pipiani mines, 260 km northwest of Georgetown.
Manganese ore was mined from 1960 to 1968 by Union Carbide and exported via a railroad and a fluvial port. Mining was done on five of a series of nine hills extending for 12 km and striking northeastern-southwestern. The manganese-bearing sequence is known to have an overall strike extent of 40 km and remains largely unexplored.
In late 2010, the Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Reunion Manganese Inc., obtained four exploration licences covering an area of 45,729 acres and embarked on an aggressive exploration program consisting of mechanized trenching, diamond drilling and ground geophysics with the objective to outline a NI 43-101 compliant resource.
Manganese is the fourth largest metal consumed in the world, behind iron, aluminum and copper. It is a key component in steel and iron production with no viable substitute, and is in short supply. (Rabindra Rooplall)
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