Open Letter to President Irfaan Ali

Aug 18, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor

Excellency, we the members of Parika / Mora Del Conte Co-operative Society Ltd. had occasion to approach you by way of a formal Petition in July of 2024 but sadly we were not favored with a reply.

We need for Mr. Janaknauth Panchu, Chief Co-operatives Development Officer of the Department of Co-operatives, Ministry of Labor, to call a General Meeting of all our listed members, then have an Audit done and then call an Annual General Members Meeting and Elections. Our last audit was in March of 2018 and our last General Meeting was held in 2023. Our only General Members Meeting and Election of Office Bearers was in January of 2017.

The Minister of Labor at a meeting on 4th November 2024 instructed just this but we are still waiting and with no feedback. My efforts to obtain an update at the end of January of 2025 were met with hostility and malevolence…

We have found that The Chief Co-operatives Development Officer does not carry out the Ministers instructions and the Chairman of the Co-op does not carry out the Chief Co-operatives Development Officer instructions.

We have paid most of the cost for the Cadastral or Block Survey at the Guyana Land and Surveys Department, about ($3,900,000), for the block of land which we have a Provisional Lease but here again members are denied any formal feedback on what is the state of play here.

Meanwhile a hostile takeover and privatization of the Society and it assets seems to be in full swing. A few months ago ,a group purporting itself to embody the Mining and Forestry Group of the Society held a meeting with a representative of the Natural Resources Ministry and managed to have signed over to the Chairman of the PMDCCSL, in his personal capacity, the capital assets i.e. mining blocks and possibly forestry concessions that have belonged to the Co-operative and all its members for more than a decade. All this is the capture of a society by actors enabled and empowered by the very agencies of the state who are constitutionally obligated to oversight the proper running of that society for the benefit of all. This is wrong your Excellency.

Meanwhile the Department of Co-operatives is making all sorts of excuses instead of moving to rectify the situation in the interest of the society and its members.
Excellency the CCDO does not seem to know that a Co-operative has to be a Co-operative. Not a sole proprietorship, not a private enterprise, not a limited partnership but a Co-operative.

In closing Excellency, we are saying that the Chief Co-operatives Development Officer Mr. Janaknauth Panchu should do his job and let the chips fall where they may. Or the judgment of History will be particularly severe on him and his cohorts in the office of the Department of Co-operatives. Thank you, your Excellency.

Leon Moses
Secretary
Parika/Mora Del Conte Co-operative Society Ltd.

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Leon Moses, Open Letter, Parika, President Irfaan Ali

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