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Three years on…Vaitarna still to add value to logs

Posted By Gaulbert Sutherland On August 19, 2013 @ 5:18 am In Local News | No Comments

Three years after acquiring large forest concessions here and exporting unprocessed logs, start-up logging company Vaitarna Holding Private Incorporated (VHPI) is yet to set up its promised wood processing facility.

Company director Chethan Narayan was unavailable when Stabroek News contacted the firm’s office several times but Minister of Natural Re-sources and the Environment, Robert Persaud told Stabroek News that the company has said initial activities are being done in terms of preparation. “But in terms of having the physical plant up and running, no,” he stated.

It is not clear when the company will set up the promised processing centre. Narayan, late last year, had assured that such a facility is on the cards and the company is doing the groundwork. “We are still working on it,” he told Stabroek News at the time. VHPI is a subsidiary of the India-based Coffee Day Group. Coffee Day, through its Dark Forest subsidiary, in 2010 acquired the State Forest Exploratory Permit (SFEP) for 391,853 hectares of forest originally awarded in 2007 to US-based Simon and Shock International Logging Inc (SSILI), after buying out SSILI.

After the acquisition, the company registered in Guyana as SSILI. Subse-quently, Dark Forest acquired the 345,961 hectares concession which was originally assigned to Caribbean Resources Limited (CRL). The government accepted an offer of $600 million for the Timber Sales Agreement (TSA). The company was registered as VHPI and has been harvesting and exporting logs from this concession.

The total area held by Coffee Day is 737,814 hectares of forest.

The company had committed to set up a processing plant here with V G Siddhartha, owner of the Coffee Day group, saying in May 2012 that a processing centre for logs will be set up here but the main facility will be in India.

The company has exported logs to India and China and Persaud had previously said that there would be no large-scale export of logs by Vaitarna.

Narayan told Stabroek News in December that they are doing the groundwork for the setting up of the plant but could not give a time frame as to when the processing centre will be set up. “We are working on the commercial (aspect),” he had said, adding that they have to look at the cost, type of production, capacity, market and so on. “We are working on it,” he assured.

He had disclosed that the Guyana Forestry Commis-sion (GFC) had asked for a practical plan for setting up a sawmill and this was submitted. In addition, their five-year operational plan includes the setting up of a sawmill, the director had said. In the meantime, the company continues to harvest logs from its CRL concession.

Narayan had disclosed that the company has 15 pieces of equipment on the ground and logs are exported and some sold locally.

He noted that in terms of setting up a plant, the company has to look at every aspect. He pointed out that Vaitarna’s concessions makes it the second largest in Guyana and “our setup should be big.”

“Whatever commitments that they made, they will have to honour,” Persaud told Stabroek News last week. In relation to whether a TSA had been granted for the SSILI concession, Persaud said no. “No TSA has been granted as yet,” he said.

In December, Narayan had said that the company had completed all the prerequisites to convert its SFEP for the SSILI concession to a TSA which would allow it to harvest logs and was awaiting approval from the GFC. “We can get (the) TSA at any moment,” he said at the time adding that they have done all the studies to a high standard.

Meantime, questions are being asked as to whether the company is interested in agriculture and mining activities here.

Asked whether the company was involved in or plans to get involved in agriculture and mining, Persaud said that he could not comment on this. “That I cannot comment on…that has not been discussed with me so I can’t comment on it. I’m not sure, you may have to speak to the principals of the company (about) their plan but Guyana is an open country to investors but I can’t say of this particular company what their intentions are, what their areas of interest, at this point in time, as of today’s date,” the minister told Stabroek News. India’s Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India has been recording outflows of foreign direct investment from India including Vaitarna. In July for example, the Bank recorded an outflow of US$0.777 million for Vaitarna from India to Guyana.

The major activity that Vaitarna is involved in, according to the Indian Central Bank, is agriculture and mining.

Article printed from Stabroek News: http://www.stabroeknews.com

URL to article: http://www.stabroeknews.com/20...o-add-value-to-logs/

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Former Member

Dream on Mr. Rohee!

STOP BLOWING SMOKE OF THE PEOPLE'S ARXX MR ROHEE

JANUARY 6, 2014 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,
Surprise! Surprise! So the PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee has been reading his Marxist/Leninist literature again, but now that he is awaken from his slumber, he is more than two decades late.
His archaic way of thinking is no longer relevant in Guyanese society. Is he selling dictatorship to his PPP supporters? Is he berating/belittling or abandoning one of their stalwart supporters—the individual who convinced them that the PPP will win a landslide victory with 63% of the votes in the 2011 election?
As Mr. Rohee tries to salvage what little support is left of the PPP, he must know that the “political hogwash” he is spewing cannot turn the clock back for the PPP – the majority of Guyanese have spoken in the last election and they have permanently abandoned them.
But in addition to the PPP losing more of its former supporters every day (the rural folks, the farmers, the working class), the corrupt elements who control the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal will never allow him to establish a “broad left, progressive, democratic front”, since such a front will demand accountability, transparency, good governance and an end to corruption.
Can the Jagdeo cabal handle accountability and transparency? Would they want corruption to end? Mr. Rohee ought to know that before they could regain any support, the PPP must lower the toll on the Berbice Bridge to $1,000 for cars and mini-buses and allow free passage for motorcycles, reduce VAT by 2 percent, give the workers a 15 percent increase and increase the pension for elders from $12,500 per month to $20,000 per month, in addition to reducing crime and corruption.
Does Mr. Rohee think that the greedy and powerful Jagdeo cabal in the PPP will implement any of the above issues? Would they allow free and transparent tendering for the multi-billion dollar procurement contract for medical supplies to slip out of their grasp? That is G$600 million lost for them every year. Dream on Rohee!
There is nothing broad or nothing leftist about the way the current Ramotar administration conducts itself. The reality is the Jagdeo cabal within the Ramotar administration are extremely narrow-minded, greedy people who are not prepared to share the wealth of the nation with anyone else but themselves and there is nothing leftist about them.
Actually, they operate more like extreme capitalists who want to devour all the resources in the country. They have already raped the treasury and have taken the best lands for themselves, and have pawned the country’s natural resources to their friends.
So rest yourself Mr. Rohee and stop talking political froth and get real. We know you are “bazadee” at this point in time as the crime wave exposes your gross incompetence, but it is no excuse for political fantasy. The decent thing to do is to deal with the crime issue and stop interfering with the daily operations of the police rather than blow a smoke screen for the people with these empty and balderdash statements to hide the truth.
The truth is the PPP is losing political support every single day because of its inept policies, lack of trust and its crooked ways, and that reality will not change before the next General Elections. If we are wrong, we dare Mr. Rohee and the PPP to call General Elections in 2014.
Dr. Asquith Rose and Harish Singh

1/12/143:37 PM

Former Member

AFC councillor details widespread corruption within party

WEDNESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2013 15:38 ADMINISTRATOR

By AFC Region 6 Councillor Haseef Yusuf

AFC Councillor, Haseef Yusuf

Nothing that the Alliance For Change (AFC) does or will do in the future will ever surprise me again. There is a saying that you only know someone when you deal with him. If I had not dealt with certain executive members of the AFC, I would still be singing their praises.I knew from the inception that Nigel Hughes would rescind his resignation because in the end, when you are in the same boat, you will never want to part company with your compadres. The ‘top guns’ in the AFC need each other’s support badly. They complement each other’s corrupt practices, as they try to outsmart their members and supporters.
However, recently there was a desperate attempt to get rid of me by the National Executive Committee of the AFC since I am not part of the corrupt ‘jahaaji’ network. They sent a message with an AFC Region 6 Councillor that if I am not pleased with the current policies and actions of the party then I should resign from the party and as an AFC Councillor. I told that Councillor in no uncertain terms that if the AFC is not pleased with my stance against cronyism and corruption and my promotion of national development, then they should expel me and furthermore, it is the corrupt ones within the AFC who should resign!

Ironically, it was the same Councillor who submitted exhaustive evidence of cronyism and corruption against an AFC MP at an inquiry, who claimed that he spent in excess of $4.5M on ‘bigan’ and ‘curass’. That was a ‘whitewash inquiry’ and even the Chairman of that inquiry, the then General Secretary Mr Sextus Edwards, was not aware of the press release which concluded that the entire episode was one of ‘misunderstanding and miscommunication.’ You cannot go against your own kind!
Subsequently, there was numerous evidence of corruption but I no longer have the resolve to bring it up. It was simply a case of you cannot fight the Devil’s case in Hell!

I will just itemize a few instances:

- Certain top members of the AFC will go abroad (Canada, USA) and members in the diaspora will hold fund- raisers and give monies collected to these members who will not submit the same in its entirety since proper accounting records are not kept. I was utterly shocked when the unaudited financial statement for 2012 showed that in one year the AFC only collected $22,087,500 from its chapters in the UK, Canada, USA, etc. During the 2011 campaign alone; one of the chapters in Canada sent $55,000 Canadian or $11,000,000 (Guyana dollars). I have evidence of this.

- Certain top AFC members will collect donations and not make any recordings in any receipt book or any document whatever.

- Monies are being spent with no proper bills or vouchers;

- positions are given to cronies and those who donate a lot.

- I saw a top AFC member collect monies and issue a receipt but on looking closer I saw that there was no carbon sheet, hence no duplication made. How was the balancing done?

- Everything was donated for a fund-raiser in Berbice and it made a loss!

- On Election Day 2011, food and drinks were diverted to some AFC members’ homes for their private use while some AFC polling agents went hungry;

- During the 2012 AFC convention, a motion was passed for AFC groups to bank all monies collected in a party account, this was never done. In fact, it was I who raised that motion which was unanimously passed. So much for accountability!

- During the 2011 elections there were three factions in Berbice and all were accusing each other about theft, mismanagement and corruption, but no investigation was done. The leaders of the AFC cannot afford to ‘rock the boat.’

- During the AFC 2012 convention, members were specifically instructed not to vote for the former General Secretary but to vote in favour of David Patterson. This also happened in the case of Moses Nagamootoo and Mrs. Punalall.

- Article 15(9) of the AFC Constitution stated that the National Executive Committee shall appoint an auditor annually yet the AFC presented an unaudited and inaccurate financial statement at the AFC 2012 Convention. There is no shortage of accountants and auditors within the AFC, so why no audited accounts?

- The financial statement which ended on February 2012 showed a surplus of $464,643 yet members were told after the 2011 Elections that the AFC owed Mrs Cathy Hughes a sum in excess of $ 7,000,000 and that the AFC MPs will have to make contributions towards offsetting that liability. How can there be a surplus when monies are owed? In other words, there were no bills to support the spending of $ 7 million! The financial statement did not speak of any liability! Here is a party that is preaching accountability but is utterly devoid of that concept in its internal dealings.

Is this the party that wants to run this country? It seems as if the worst from the PNC and PPP formed the AFC; not the best as I had believed! Mr Ramjattan himself told me that if the AFC had won the elections, there would have been ‘murderation’ among members for positions. But it would have also been ‘murderation’ to fill their pockets! Imagine all the political blackmail that is going on now with the intention to fill some of the AFC’s ‘fat cats’ pockets! Come on Ramjattan, make the ‘right turn’ or resign! You cannot allow your ‘boys’ to continue their corrupt tendencies! But then can you afford “to rock the boat”?
Is it wrong for me to speak out about the very things the AFC is preaching in public about? Should I keep my mouth shut, turn a blind eye and pretend that all is well within my party?
I believe in what the Great Mahatma preached- do not be afraid to speak out against corruption even if you are alone. History will judge and absolve me for speaking out against cronyism and corruption within my party. I will have to clean my house before I clean my neighbour’s. Let us remove the ‘beam’ from our own eyes then we can see to remove the ‘speck’ from our brother’s.