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Deep suffering at Chinese Landing as Govt ban on mining bites – Village Toshao tells NTC conference
Kaieteur News – Newly elected Toshao of Chinese Landing, North West District, Region One, Nikita Miller on Tuesday told Natural Resources Minister, Vickram Bharrat that the mining ban his government placed her village on has created “lots of hardships” for the villagers.
Chinese landing newly elected Toshao, Nikita Miller
“The ban was not only on the four mining blocks (that are presently in dispute) but on all the village lands so we can’t go and work.”
She described it as a “horrible ban that negatively affected her village.” Families cannot provide necessary (and) basic food stuff, they cannot maintain their children in secondary schools.”
Miller continued. She said that her villagers are indeed grateful for the “school children cash grant” but without work they are still unable to feed their children on a daily basis. She alleged too, that although there is a ban, all mining persons are still working on the disputed lands while villagers cannot even work outside of the disputed mining blocks.
Miller said that when villagers attempt to do so, they are threatened with seizure of their equipment. Chinese Landing residents have been involved in more than a decade long dispute over Titled Lands- Four Mining Blocks that were awarded to a miner identified as M.V and had led to them filing a petition with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to intervene so that that government could stop M.V and other outsiders from mining the disputed lands.
The government had placed a ban on all mining at Chinese Landing after the IACHR issued a resolution last year. The international body had called on the Guyanese authorities to implement a series of measures to protect the indigenous Carib Community of Chinese Landing.
According to the commission the Carib Community, a total of 210 residents is at serious risk of suffering irreparable harm to their human rights by miners and even some members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF). Details of those risks were outlined in the petition the village had filed with the IACHR. The government had sent in a team to meet with the residents and investigate the risks that threatened their human rights.
Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat
Not long after that meeting Vice President at one of his press conferences in August, 2023, said that his government has taken steps to ban all mining in Chinese Landing. According to the VP then it is the only way to cure the source of the dispute over the titled lands. “The Government of Guyana took steps to shut down the mining there and therefore there will be no pollution breach, there will be no harassment there,” Jagdeo had said during the press conference.
He had added, “It seems as though now the Toshao (Orin Fernandes at the time) is saying allow only us to mine but shutdown the others but that is not what they argued. Because mining wherever it is done could be causing the pollution so that is where we are now, we have cured the breach that went before the commission.”
In January, 2024, Former Opposition MP, Mervin Williams had criticisd the move saying that the government is just being vindictive because the residents never asked for all mining to stop only mining on the disputed blocks. He opined that the ban is the government’s way of punishing the Indigenous people for speaking out. A few months later in March, Chinese Landing issued a statement calling on the government to lift the ban because villagers were facing tremendous hardship.
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