We need international experts to monitor and control EXXON

Aug 08, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – Recently I saw a video of a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee [PAC] of the Guyana Parliament, and the following was disclosed, the GRA boss told the PAC that he required 60 plus persons to man the section of our GRA which is being trained to monitor EXXON et al, and that he only had half that number, since as fast as he was training them, they are being paid to leave the GRA for other more lucrative positions.

This is the same GRA which mixed up the TIN of Mr. Anthony Joseph Vieira, born 1945 with Anthony Joseph Vieira born 1971!

It took me and my son years to unravel that mess. This was not decades ago we only unraveled the mix up two years ago.

Guyanese cannot monitor and ensure the country gets its just deserts from the OIL industry; we MUST stop this nonsense of believing that any Guyanese currently living in Guyana can operate at these levels in the petroleum industry at the level of an EXXON especially given its reputation of facilitating corruption worldwide according to the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). KN April 1 2022 “Exxon contractors linked to biggest corruption scandals in oil industry”

Since I have a pretty good understanding of the operations of the Guyana Sugar Industry, I will give, as my evidence, the example of what happened there, since we clearly have many persons occupying the halls of power in this country who are misled into believing otherwise.

In 1975 the year before nationalization, the Guyana sugar industry produced 298,751 tonnes of sugar. In 1990, just 15 operational years later, the industry only produced 132,030.5 tonnes. At which stage the government under Desmond Hoyte, got the message, which was that political interference in the industry was destroying it, and that when the industry stopped operating under the discipline and expertise of Bookers, it left very few Guyanese capable of managing the industry properly after Nationalization.

So he retained Booker Tate as Managers to run the affairs of the Corporation, and under their management, by 1999, just 10 years after being hired, the industry produced 319,829 Tonnes of sugar!

In 2006 the PPP (Peoples Progressive Party) appointed as Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud who believed that we were paying Booker Tate far too much and terminated their contract. Ten years later in 2016 the Guyana sugar industry, including the ill-conceived and poorly executed Skeldon estate expansion produced only 183,615 tonnes! The plan was for the local industry to produce 425,000 tonnes by then!

These are the facts, and it shows clearly that Guyanese with political interference cannot run the local sugar industry and it has failed.

We continue to make the same mistake. No matter the cost we need international experts to monitor and control EXXON et al. especially since we had people in Guyana who were knowledgeable and even worked in our sugar industry but were still unable to run it! I cannot say that we have even one person in Guyana who I believe is competent to ensure that EXXON et al is not raping us.

Finally editor, I was a member of the PAC [2006-2010] along with the best parliamentarian I ever knew, Mr. Winston Murray, and what I saw of the proceeding of the PAC was more of a political posturing rather than an actual examination of the areas which the Auditor General had highlighted as problematic in his audit, which is what it should be. This left the Ministry of finance with egg on its face for not taking measures to rectify this, what is for Guyana, MOST important function of the GRA i.e. to monitor EXXON et al. Also, I don’t remember seeing the Auditor General at that meeting of the PAC!

How can anyone think that the PAC can have a legitimate session without the Auditor General present?

Tony Vieira.

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governance, GRA, Guyanese, Nationalization, People's Progressive Party, Robert Persaud

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