An ordinary citizen, not Barama's defender

Extracted from : http://guyanaforestry.blogspot.com/2007/03/ordinary-citizen-not-baramas-defender.html



An ordinary citizen, not Barama's defender
Kaieteur News
5 March 2007

Dear Editor,

I wish to refer to Mr. Seelochan Beharry's letter in Kaieteur News of Sunday 11th February, 2007, under the caption, “The ‘spin doctors'of Barama have some tough explaining to do”.

I wish to submit the following:

1. Mr. T. Atkinson is Barama's state defender; I am not a defender of the Barama Company. I am simply expressing my views as an ordinary citizen of Guyana. Barama is not a state. It is a logging company registered under the laws of Guyana.

2. Stakeholder's comment: “That the Akawini and St Monica communities are unhappy and are being cheated by the company.” The stakeholder's comments are totally irresponsible since the name of the company was not specified. ASI was also unprofessional in its investigations. The communities mentioned signed a contract for forest harvesting with the Interior Woods Product Inc (IWPI). Payments were made to the communities, but because of embezzlement payments had to be made to the
Ministry of Amerindian Affairs instead until the accounting books of the communities were audited.

What happened was that both the stakeholder and the representatives of the communities failed to tell the ASI the reason why payments were stopped being made to the communities.

Mr. Beharry should stop reacting irresponsibly to second-hand information which is sometimes inaccurate.

3. BCL was fined for not paying its 2% log exporting tax. Can Mr. Beharry submit evidence of this? Or is this another assumption by him?

4. Sub-contracting of State Forest permissions (SFPs) sub-contracting is not a violation of our national laws, since clause 14 of TSAs allows for subcontracting of concessions in conformity with annual operational plans. Mr. Beharry is again inaccurate.

5. The ASI Audit (Consultations) became contaminated because they became heavily dependent on the Guyana Citizens Initiative (GCI) which comprises opposition politicians who are not the prime stakeholders of the forestry sector.

6. Can Mr. Beharry tell the Guyanese and International Communities why he is silent on the Omai Gold Company which claimed that it did not make a profit after 12 years of mining and at the end of 1995 had a reserve of 3.3 million ounces of gold and offered the Guyanese people an “Environmental Disaster?”

Mr. Beharry's “Love” for Guyana is therefore nothing but a lie, since he chooses to wage a vendetta against the BCL while omitting the Omai Gold Company and other companies.

7. Mr. Beharry claims to be patriotic while he lives and writes from abroad. He left Guyana after being disgruntled with the Government of Guyana for not being offered a senior position at the University of Guyana (UG).

8. Barama's exportation of its products does not mean that the company has covered its capital investments in the sector. The matter of being the “best and award-winning company” as applied to Barama is therefore a non-issue in the current forestry debate relating to the claim that the company is making big profits.

9. Mr. Beharry continues to irrelevantly quote me when I said in a previous letter “Amerindian concerns about Barama…were effectively settled a long time ago.” This quotation was in respect to the minor problems some Amerindians had with the BCL at Port Kaituma in 1992 which were resolved but spread by the Marcus Chichester report of 1997.

Mr. Beharry is now using this quotation when he refers to a misleading comment about the Akawini and St Monica communities being cheated.

Trevor Atkinson