Illegal activities connected to gold-smuggling must frontally be addressed – GGDMA

In order to truly and successfully address the scourge of gold-smuggling, the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) has posited, the Guyana Government must move to eliminate illicit activities that precede the act of smuggling.
The GGDMA expressed on Saturday that decisive action taken by the Government with the aim of stamping out gold-smuggling must start with the curbing of illegal activities that precede smuggling. It said illegal mining, illegal shops, and the unregulated trading of gold within the interior are the pillars upon which the illicit gold smuggling enterprise survives.
The GGDMA is also contending that by its lax enforcement in the sector, Government’s regulatory agency, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), has allowed illegalities to flourish. The GGDMA has noted that, in the past, there were a number of gazetted areas in the interior where trade could take place, but now it is common practice for persons to set up itinerant trading posts, also known as landings, at wherever they please. According to the GGDMA, this has resulted in a multitude of landings being set up throughout the interior, and illegal gold buyers buy directly from unethical miners — those who are willing to sell their production for higher prices, free of any paper trail and without paying any royalties or taxes. Those landings, the GGDMA has further alleged, are now “hubs for human trafficking (and) the sale of illegal drugs and weapons”.
“We have repeatedly called for the reduction of the vast number of these hubs, and for the ones that remain to be properly regularized. To date, no meaningful action has been taken. If the avenues through which illegal miners and illegal buyers are connecting is significantly reduced, then there would undoubtedly be an increase in gold declarations”, the GGDMA is contending.
“It is time the Government also engages its financial agencies, such as the FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit) and SOCU (Special Organised Crime Unit), to investigate these many shop owners and mining operators who, despite having massive operations, do not declare any significant amounts of gold,” the GGDMA has related in a statement.
Further, the GGDMA is calling for a more serious approach to tackling illegal mining. Its argument is that illegal mining is taking place on closed area lands in Mining Districts Three, Four and Five. In fact, the GGDMA has said, as of 2020, there were approximately more than 6,000,000 acres of closed area mining lands, and many miners had made repeated appeals to the GGMC about illegal activities, but very little gets done.
In these regards, the GGDMA is calling on Government to demonstrate that it is serious about finally addressing the precursors to smuggling and other activities that currently taint Guyana’s gold and would make it undesirable internationally.
“For the future survival of the mining industry, the GGDMA continues to stand with the Government of Guyana to tackle these problems. This is not the first time the GGDMA has made this appeal,” the GGDMA has said. “We remain ready to support practical solutions to this rising threat”. (G1)