Timber Question

Timber question
Guyana Chronicle, 9 February 2007

I RECENTLY read an interesting article in the Guyana Chronicle of
January 26th, headlined “President off to Russia today”.

I must compliment President Jagdeo for this initiative by going to
Russia meeting both with President Putin and also Executives of RUSAL
–
the giant aluminium producer.

My understanding is the President wants assurances that this company
would not only engage in extracting and shipping the ore from Guyana in
an unprocessed form, but rather get more involved in having it refined
here.

The very article also mentioned that President Jagdeo wants the same
assurance from the Chinese Company BOSAI Mineral Group which bought the
Linden bauxite operations from IAMGOLD for US$ 46M.

However, I felt the President’s main concern is the safeguarding of
the
thousands of jobs that depend on the bauxite industry in Guyana. This
is undoubtedly the kind of thinking we need for this country to develop
for the benefit of all its people.

It now brings me to this question -- why not the same view on the
current boiling issues taking place with regards to the timber
industry?

I have seen first hand where the mainly Asian timber companies are only
interested in exporting logs.

From reports and articles in the newspapers, this seems to have
accelerated over these last five years at the expense of processing or
value-added activities. What is even worse is the large numbers of
foreign Asian workers brought in to work for these companies even
though local persons can easily do these jobs with some training.

I find it very necessary to draw this issue parallel to the
President’s
initiative to personally ensure that a good deal is struck for the
bauxite industry to guarantee mutual benefit to both investor and
country.

Unlike the bauxite industry which is very capital intensive, the timber
industry can easily benefit thousands of persons who are involved in
both processing logs (using mobile mills directly into the forest) and
those involved in the downstream processing in factories.

We at Linden welcome what President Jagdeo plans for the bauxite
industry but would like to ask him to correct what is taking place in
another very vital sector of our country, the timber industry. Time is
not on our side.
O. GILKES