Stakeholders to examine GGMC Act to enhance local mining school

The Guyana Mining School and Training Centre Inc Consultancy Project hosted a one-day workshop to engage stakeholders with matters relating to the gold mining sector and its environmental impacts on Friday. After the consultations concluded, it was agreed that there would be an examination of the Guyana Geology and

Mines Commission (GGMC) Act, focusing on the areas of providing training opportunities, self-financing considerations for the school, and to employ “revised organisational structure for the said Mining School”.

According to the Natural Resources Ministry, the workshop was coined to create awareness of the current issues that the mining school faces, to present findings of a curriculum audit that had been undertaken by the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences (FEES); and to present recommendations and to provide a forum for feedback.

Among the stakeholders present at Friday’s workshop were representatives from the Natural Resources Ministry, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA), the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Protected Areas Commission (PAC), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Guyana and Conservation International (CI) Guyana.

According to the Ministry, the gold mining issues include “inadequate management of tailings, little rehabilitation of mined-out areas and various other practices pose increased threats to the extremely high levels of biodiversity endemic to Guyana.” Other challenges highlighted included: “barriers hampering the mainstreaming of biodiversity in the gold mining sector; non-compliance with mining related environmental regulations and illegal mining, insufficient personnel and capacity to implement regulations and codes of practice.”

On this basis, the Ministry explained that it is committed to “strengthening the enabling environment” for the monitoring and enforcement of mining related regulations and codes of practice and the reorganisation of the Guyana Mining School and Training Centre.

The University of Guyana’s Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences was noted as “assisting to enhance the capacity of the Guyana Mining School and Training Centre Inc, with a view of making the school more effective in preparing persons to mine gold in a sustainable, compliant and more efficient way”.

It was explained that the initiative resulted from collaborations between the Government of Guyana, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to implement the ‘Enhancing Biodiversity Protection through Strengthened Monitoring, Enforcement and Uptake of Environmental Regulations in Guyana’s Gold Mining Sector’ Project.