Amnesty period granted for miners to pay arrears to GGMC

The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has embarked on an amnesty period, which commenced on October 1, allowing miners to make payments if they were behind on rental payments.
In a notice, the Commission informed that the Natural Resources Ministry was flanked by numerous requests from miners, who were lagging in their payments for renting medium-scale properties.
A grace period is extended to all medium-scale property holders who are in arrears or those whose properties have not already been cancelled in the official gazette. Adding to that, 50 per cent of the accumulated penalty on these debts will be waived.
“The penalty accrued on said arrears will attract a waiver of fifty per cent,” the notice read.
Miners were warned that the grace period will end on December 31, 2019, and will not be extended. For those who do not make use of this opportunity, their properties will be cancelled. The outstanding payments of rentals should be deposited prior to the said deadline.
Miners have been faced with a number of challenges in the extraction of gold, with deplorable interior trails being a chief issue. In July, a large number of miners and other business operators complained of not being able to reach the mining areas to work owing to the deplorable state of the Itaballi-Puruni Road, Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni).
The Itaballi-Puruni Road is the main thoroughfare used by persons in accessing the gold mining districts of Puruni Number 3, Cuyuni Number 4, and the Middle Mazaruni area, Region Seven from the Papishou Landing. The Puruni Road runs from the community of Itaballi, Mazaruni River, Lower Mazaruni, to the Papishou Landing, Mazaruni River, and Middle Mazaruni, and is the only entrance and exit to various key sections of Region Seven.
However, gold declarations by the Guyana Gold Board (GGB) for 2019 are expected to be surpassed by the end of this year in light of the records for the past six months which are higher than expected.
In January, the GGB had projected that for 2019, declarations and exportations are to be pegged at 651,000 ounces. This estimation was established in retrospect to the outcome from 2018, which turned out to be an “encouraging year” for the organisation.