Will we ever learn?

Oct 28, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Jim Jones who led more than 900 Americans to commit mass murder suicide in Guyana in 1978 had a sign painted behind his local throne. It read, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

When you are entrapped in a neo-liberal ideology it is easy to forget the past. In such circumstances, it is inevitable that the mistakes committed in the past are going to be repeated.

One voice has been crying out to this nation calling attention to the mistakes which are being repeated. Glenn Lall has been almost single-handedly in calling attention to these mistakes.

It is for this reason that this column has said that all Guyanese should listen to what Glenn Lall has to say. You do not have to agree with everything that he says to appreciate the essential core of his message. Glenn Lall is basically saying to us that the foreign multinationals in the oil and gas and gold mining sectors, in cahoots with some of our leaders, are plundering our resources and creaming off the country’s wealth.

He is critical of the deals which we are making. He has pointed out repeatedly that with the natural resource wealth which this country possesses, we should be all enjoying a far higher standard of living. But the reason we are not is because our wealth is being raped right under our noses. Glenn Lall is not attacking any political party. He is saying that our leaders need to do more in ensuring that the country gets a better deal for these resources. All he is fighting for is a better deal for the people of Guyana.

But most our leaders have their heads buried in the sand and are unwilling to change course and ensure that our country gets a better deal. Instead, they are repeating the mistakes of the past. When OMAI Gold Mines was first opened, there were high expectations. The Guyanese people were serenaded and told that this investment would do wonders for the country, create a great deal of jobs and improve the economy. People were led to believe that the gold mine was in fact the mythical and lost city of El Dorado. And that the gold, which would be dug up, would make millionaires of all of us.

Like today, we were told that the investment would create thousands of jobs and have spin off effects such as the demand for food and construction services. The thousands of jobs did not materialize and most of the services were in the hands of a few companies.
Three million, seven hundred thousand (3,700,000) ounces later, the country is still wondering about the wisdom in allowing the exploitation of the mine.
Guyana got a pittance in royalties from OMAI. It is estimated that after the first ten years, the royalty payments were a mere US$45.5 M. The company never showed a profit and therefore no corporation tax was ever paid.

Those royalties payments proved insufficient to remedy the damage and destruction caused in 1995 when OMAI’s tailing ponds gave way and leaked cyanide-laced effluent into the OMAI and Essequibo Rivers. This company once flew in KFC chicken by airplane for its workers. This company once gave a loan to a union official. This is how multi-nationals operate. They spend lavishly and they court officials.
The deal with OMAI involved generous tax holidays for the company. The taxes that the Government derived from the operations did not come from the company, but from the workers. The company milked its tax holiday. It paid little or nothing in taxes. And how many workers were employed then, and how much of a difference did that make to the country’s coffers?
What was very amazing about this investment was that in all its years in existence, OMAI never made a profit. Not a dime. One wonders why they did not pack up and bail out earlier.
For years, gold has been extracted out of the country, and given the size of our population; every single Guyanese should have been rich by now from the wealth created. Yet Guyana is still one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere. We have never learnt from that experience.

Today the situation is not much different. Foreign multinationals have returned to target our gold. And what are we receiving in return?  Again we are being sold false promises. We are asked to recall the benefits which OMAI brought, and them to imagine three more OMAIs in Guyana. We are once again being sold pipe dreams about thousands of jobs, the food that will be required to feed the workers and the demand for construction services.

But we have been down this road before and it leads to poverty and destitution and parents still struggling to put a lunch in their children’s lunch kits. History is repeating itself once again. Will we ever learn?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not this newspaper.)

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