Latest update November 21st, 2024 1:00 AM
Mines Officers partially responsible for low gold declarations – Miners Association
Kaieteur News – The Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) on Thursday said that Mines Officers attached to the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) are partly responsible for the decline in the country’s gold declarations.
According to GGDMA, the officers commonly known wardens are allowing illegal mining to take place in goldfields legally owned by small and medium-scale miners.
“Most worrying is that it seems as if the illegal operators have found ways to make some GGMC/Core of Warden Officers “look the other way,” GGDMA sated while explaining that the increase in “raiding” and illegal operations have negatively impacted the industry.
GGDMA said that even when reports are made, “some GGMC/Core of Warden Officers often frustrate the process.”
“…They act slowly, taking more steps to nitpick at infractions by the legitimate tenure holders while not taking the condign steps to stop the illegal operations”, the Miner’s Association added.
GGDMA said that despite multiple cease orders being given to stop illegal mining, the operators do not comply and the Mines Officers do nothing to enforce the laws or remove the repeat offenders.
“It is the illegal operators who rob the State of revenue and have an overall negative impact on gold declarations,” GGDMA said.
In its statement, GGDMA urged the Government to clamp down on the whole chain of illegal mining activities, including illicit shops, illicit landings, illicit miners/raiders and the illicit purchasers of gold.
Mining operations in Guyana’s interior (KN photo/Shervin Belgrave)
“The GGDMA does not support these activities and calls on the Government for immediate action,” the organisation stated. It called too for the authorities to take the necessary action to remove rogue elements in the industry with the hope that the gold sector can recover by the last quarter of this year.
Apart from the illegal miners and mines officers who turn a blind eye to the illegalities, the GGDMA listed other factors that have contributed to the decline in gold declarations.
Among those factors, according to GGDMA, is the ongoing competition for labour, driven by the explosion in construction and job opportunities in the oil and gas sector.
The Miners Association added, “This has been compounded over the last three years, with above normal rainfall and the subsequent flooding in mining areas.”
GGDMA also said there is a need to improve accessibility to minerals with new infrastructure such as roads to access new areas with high mineralization.
In July, Kaieteur News reported that over the past six years, Guyana’s gold declarations have been falling, even with the massive discoveries being announced.
This year, the trend continues, with the Bank of Guyana (BoG) reporting a decline in declarations for the first three months of the year when compared with the same period last year.
The BoG in its first quarter statistical report on the performance of the economy has said that gold declarations were lower by 5.3 percent, as local and licensed dealers’ declarations contracted by 23.9 percent.
The financial institution, however, reported that, “The declarations from Aurora Gold Mine Inc. (AGM), Zijin Mining’s subsidiary in Guyana, the sole operating foreign company, increased by 65.4 percent, when compared to the same period one year prior.”
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