Peeping Tom Column - Recall this bill

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Peeping Tom Column
Recall this bill
Kaieteur News, 5 August 2007

The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Robert Persaud, should disassociate
himself from the recently passed Guyana Forestry Commission Bill 2007.
And all those persons who are presently Commissioners of the Guyana
Forestry Commission should refuse to be part of the new Commission
established by this Bill.

Mr. Persaud is very much seen as the Presidential candidate-in-waiting
of the People's Progressive Party. If he hopes to enhance his public
appeal, he should recall this obnoxious and rotten piece of
legislation, which gives him more work and responsibility than he
needs.

In the case of the Commissioners, this recently Bill does not change
their status but seriously alters their standing and insults their
professionalism. They should collectively refuse to serve on the new
Guyana Forestry Commission.

The purpose of the new Bill is outlined in the explanatory memorandum
and states that it is for the establishment of the Guyana Forestry
Commission as a body corporate and imposes strict confidentiality on
members, employees, consultants and advisers of the Commission.

A careful reading of the Bill would suggest that its principal purpose
is about the confidentiality aspect since there hardly seems to have
been a need to establish a new Commission as the Guyana Forestry
Commission Act of 1979 adequately secures this.

In fact, the new Commission is not much different from the old
Commission. The new Bill retains the old Commissioners by providing
that every person holding an appointment as member of the former
Commission (other than the chairman) immediately before the
commencement is deemed to have been appointed a member of the new
Commission. Also the functions of the Commission as outlined in the
Bill can be adequately accommodated under the old legislation.

The only reason it would seem why this Bill was introduced would
therefore seem to be to impose the confidentiality requirements.

This comes against a storm of criticism over the years over the
forestry sector. These criticisms cannot solely be attributed to
disgruntled persons. It began with serious charges being levied by the
United States Department of State over the alleged grant of a forestry
concession to a controversial local company.

It was later clarified that a forestry permit had not been granted even
though there has been significant capitalization by the company
involved.

In more recent times, there has been unending debate in the pages of
national newspapers about the logging and exportation activities of
Asian companies. Considered against this background, it would have been
more prudent for the government to encourage its Commissioners to be
more public with the work of the Commission rather than imposing strict
confidentiality requirements.

Section 13 of the act prohibits any person who has obtained information
as a member, employee, consultant or adviser of the Commission to
directly or indirectly-

a) make a record of that information;

b) disclose that information to any person

c) make use or act on that information

except for the purposes of the Commission; where required by law or
where authorized by the Commission in circumstances where the record,
disclosure, use, or act in question is not likely to prejudice the
Commission.

The government has since clarified that these prohibitions are limited
to the business of the Commission.

This is where the professionalism of the Commissioners is insulted.

On the one hand, the Commissioners are being asked to be responsible
for the work of the Guyana Forestry Commission; they obviously are the
ones to be held accountable for their decisions, yet they have to do
this under a piece of legislation that prohibits them from being
accountable to the wider society for the decisions that they take, and
even more obnoxiously, from making a record of that information other
than for the purposes of the Commission.

It is of course more than understandable that no Commissioner should
use information at his disposal for his personal benefit. Therefore one
had expected that stronger provisions would have been included that
would have precluded members from sharing information that could bring
private benefit to themselves or to friends; one expected that conflict
of interest provisions would have been included in the legislation.

However to prohibit Commissioners from making a record of information
is to ask them to carry out their duties based on memory and guesswork.
This is not the sort of corporate culture that should exist in any
society, much less one with claims to be a democratic society.

Luckily, the legislation cannot be retroactively applied and as such
the present Commissioners will still be able to explain some of the
decisions that they took in the past and in the recent future. Before
the new Bill kicks in, it is therefore hoped that the Guyana Forestry
Commission will open its business to greater public scrutiny.