Protest looms over ‘wicked’ changes to oil fund

Dec 28, 2021 News

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– petition lodged as calls grow for Bill to be sent to Special Select Committee

Kaieteur News – Publisher of the Kaieteur News and advocate for a better oil deal, Glenn Lall, has called for a massive protest on Wednesday [December 29] to force the government to dump its ‘suspect’ Natural Resources Bill, which gives the President enormous powers to appoint members to the various committees and is also short on penalties for the abuse of the resources.The Irfaan Ali administration tabled the Natural Resources Amendment Bill on December 16, and is expected to use its one seat majority in the House to ram it through Parliament on Wednesday.

The main Opposition said, due to the complex nature of the Bill and its importance to the management of the country’s oil resources, Members of Parliament (MPs) need more time to study it.
As such, they have called for the Bill to be sent to a Special Select Committee for fine-tuning and possible changes, before it is debated in the House.
Government however, seems to be in a hurry to pass the bill into law, with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo saying, the people of Guyana gave his party a mandate at the last elections and they will forge ahead.
Addressing the issue on his programme “the Glenn Lall Show” on Christmas Day, Lall told his audience that such a crucial law should not be rushed through Parliament.
“Why are they in such a rush, at this time of the year when people having a good time? Your government hustling to pass a law to spend our oil money,” Lall stated, saying something seems wrong.
“And they doing it behind we back in a sneaky way – in the wee hours of the morning when they know we are all in a deep, deep sleep,” he added. He told Guyanese not to allow such a thing to happen.
“On Wednesday at 10:00 AM, in Parliament all of you should come out in droves. Don’t depend on your leaders, get out there and stamp your feet and say enough is enough. I will try to be there with you guys with my placard. Bring your own placard. I got some jerseys to share away too,” Lall added.
He said the amendment of the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) Bill, will be passed in the dead of the night, “and we will all be stuck with it, unless ya’ll come out there yourselves and demand that the PPP put it into what you call a Special Select Committee, and give enough time for the people to study and weigh the pros and cons.”
He said, Guyanese must put pressure on the government to put together a proper law, with proper oversight in which every Guyanese can go to bed every night and sleep well.
“They don’t have to wonder, is how much them gon thief out and say they spend on this solar project, or this lil flood, like how them a thief $19,000 Covid grant money, imagine what they will do with that bank account in New York.”
The amendments to the legislation governing the NRF propose that there be two key committees and a Board of Directors to preside over the management of the nation’s oil money. Importantly, all of the members on these committees as well as the Board will be appointed by the President or his Minister responsible for natural resources.
As part of the governance structure for the NRF, the government proposes to establish a Board of Directors, which shall comprise of not less than three and not more than five persons who shall be appointed by the President, and one of whom shall be appointed Chairperson by the President.
The amended Bill proposes that the directors be selected from among persons who have wide experience and ability in legal, financial, business or administrative matters.

It was noted that one of the Board members shall be nominated by the National Assembly along with one from the private sector. The Bill states that the directors shall be appointed for a period not exceeding two years and shall be eligible for reappointment. Apart from the Board, there would also be an Investment Committee which shall have seven members appointed by the Minister of Natural Resources. They will include nominees from the Minister of Finance, Minister in charge of the oil sector, the Attorney General, Leader of the Opposition, the Private Sector and two ex officio non-voting members: the Senior Investment Advisor and Analyst and a nominee from the Governor of Bank of Guyana. The Committee would be required to take account of the current conditions, opportunities and constraints in the relevant financial matters, the principle of financial diversification with the objective of maximizing risk-adjusted financial returns and taking into account the capacity of the institutions involved in the management of the fund and the nation’s ability to bear financial risk.
We need three months
Former Minister of Public Infrastructure under the previous administration, David Patterson, said, that due to the nature of the Bill, it is only fitting that the National Assembly and the nation at large be given three months’ time to fully scrutinise the document that contains more than 30 pages of information.
He said, “there are about two petitions in Parliament asking for them not to pass the legislation as yet, but to give the whole country time to go through the bill and comment on it because people are very concerned and we (as Opposition) are very concerned about the fact that they have dismantled the 22-member committee and replaced it with handpicked persons. Then there are several other issues”.
Patterson is convinced that the Government is rushing to enact the legislation, since it would enable it access to the oil funds sooner.
More so, he said with this proposed Bill, the incumbent administration would be able to, not only access the funds, but do so without any supervision, since the Government has proposed to remove the 22-member oversight committee.
The former APNU/AFC administration had set up a 22-member oversight committee, comprising of a representative from civil society organizations and community based organizations, the Bar Association of Guyana, the Guyana Consumers’ Association, the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Transparency International Guyana Inc. (TIGI) and the Guyana Press Association, among others.
Petition lodged
Local civil society group, Policy Forum Guyana in a petition lodged at Parliament recently also called for the Bill to be deferred. With some 60 signatories to the petition the organization said the Bill should be parked, until proposed amendments can be considered by non-parliamentary citizens.
“The National Assembly should ensure that the key natural resources of our country, on which the future sustainable development of Guyana hinges, are managed as required by Article 36 in the National Constitution 1980 and so as to maximise the net social benefit,” the petition read.
The Petition calls for a pause on any debate on the Natural Resources Fund Act (NRFA) in order that, the government must fully engage with both the opposition and civil society on amending the NRF Act, with the Natural Resources Sector Committee of Parliament available to facilitate such a process.

 

 

 

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