The recent reports in the dailies that about 15,000 ounces of gold are smuggled out of Guyana weekly is not new. Gold smuggling has been an ongoing activity which became more noticeable in the mid-1980s when Guyana returned to the global economy after two decades of suffocating Cooperative Socialism. What is new is the consistency and magnitude of gold smuggling, although one is sceptical as to how and what methods US agencies have applied or used to arrive at such conclusion.

What is embarrassing is that it took the findings of a foreign entity for this country, this laughably inept regime to accept that gold smuggling has been going on at unprecedented levels. You would think that in preparation of 50 years of independence celebration that the regime would be pro-active and act in concert of being independent. When would Guyana, and this current regime, stop relying on foreign entity to tell them what is going on in their own backyard? Where is the independence? Is this regime in depends?
That said, the challenge now is not only to stamp out gold smuggling since it robs the public coffers of funds that are needed for the monitoring and management of this very activity but also to contain rapacious gold mining practices. However, the appointment of the individuals in charge – MP Raphael Trotman and MP Simona Brooms – have raised doubts as to whether they are capable enough to manage the challenges so associated with gold mining: child labour, prostitution, human trafficking, habitat disturbance and destruction, mercury contamination, environmental degradation, corruption, unsustainable development and gold smuggling, to name a few.

I have written six articles (1999-2007) on environmental issues on Guyana, especially in the gold mining arena, and I have not come across the names Trotman or Broomes then and since 2007. These individuals have suddenly become environmental leaders. My take is that experience is great motivator, a mover of things and if one does not have it, then he or she lacks something to perform at expected levels.
The recent appointment of Broomes in environmental leadership is even more troubling. Arguably, her appointment is a conflict of interest since she has revealed that she has vested interest and investment in the mining sector. The mere fact that she would be allowed to monitor her own mining interest logically implies that she would be partial or reluctant to reporting any irregularities. This is exactly what independent environmental monitoring agencies condemn. Does anyone really think that this individual would be pro-active in reporting anything suspect about her mining relationship to the public?  Broomes’ appointment is a recipe for disaster, mark my words, and I support a private investigation into her relationship with mining into the far flung interior region before it is too late.

The President’s rational for Broomes’ appointment is risible and self- serving. He may be correct when he said that Broomes has a vortex of energy and experience in gold mining as far as she has mining concessions. But what the President did not say is that Broomes lacks environmental leadership skills and her stewardship is lacklustre and less known. Again, she does not appear anywhere in the literature of environmental policies.

What would have been an opportunity for the improvement of the management of Guyana’s natural resources, wasn’t. Instead, the President’s confidence in Broomes’ appointment speaks to a morally blind regime lusting and grasping for glory, and in consequence, revealing a malodorous practice of politics. The Guyanese people have gradually been re-introduced to the residues of the PNC’s vicious past.

The buffoonery of the regime forces me to ask: Is Guyana again becoming militaryesque? The recent Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) on a surveillance operation on National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) seems to support this claim and those who had not experienced the PNC 28 years of rampage and grip on Guyana, I say look out, since the past in Guyana does not seem dead. (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu)