Guyana Post Newspaper

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Wednesday March 24 , 2021

Pres. Irfaan Ali touts Guyana’s development over the next ten years

BK challenges a decision

by GGMC to grant four quarry Licences for areas already applied for to ‘Shell’ Mohamed’s company

PEOPLE IN GUYANA’S BORDER WITH BRAZIL WANT THE VACCINE, DESPERATELY

Guyana Post Wednesday March 24, 2021

Pres. Irfaan Ali touts Guyana’s development over the next ten years

President Irfaan Ali made this comment during the ‘Invest in Guyana’ virtual conference

With Guyana’s image escalating as a global front in the Oil and Gas Sector, the Government of Guyana will be looking beyond this sector for development.

It would also be looking towards the need for diversifying the economy for sustainable development through an important partnership with the European Union.

President Irfaan Ali made this comment during the ‘Invest in Guyana’ virtual conference, which

is organized by the European Delegation to Guyana.

In a featured address, President Ali emphasized that his Government will be looking toward the European Union and its business for direct investment in Guyana beyond an Oil Economy.

“Guyana offers a number of advantages for European firms. For the past 45 years, it has been engaging in economic partnership with Europe and is therefore not a destination for European investors. Guyana is

strategically located and offers the opportunity for key markets, including the Caribbean.

“Guyana welcomes investors from Europe.

We look forward particularly to European foreign investment and for Europe-based forms to partner with local companies is seizing the unfolding economic activity,” President Ali said.

He said that despite the need for investment beyond oil, the Government will be tailoring investment in

a manner that can be sustained, that will bring in revenues beyond the oil and gas sector.

This, he said, is needed especially during the next ten years of development when the Government will be working toward diversifying the economy by reorganizing several traditional sectors.

“Guyana is unfurling a national transformative agenda over the next ten years. In the next ten years, we will witness unprecedented growth and development.

“The country’s gross

domestic product will more than double; the traditional sector will be retooled, recapitalized and reorganized; mega infrastructure agriculture, digital, energy, tourism, and transport will radically transform the country’s connectivity.”

Mr. Ali said that this will tie into his Government’s aim to gain partnerships that will help key economic transformation such as the Linden-Lethem Highway, the deep-water harbour along with a

shore base, etc.

It was also noted that the framework is being tailored for a hassle-free investment market and will in return bring great returns for all.

The virtual business conference is said to be organized in collaboration with the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export), the Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (CAIPA), and the Guyana Investment Agency (GO-Invest).

The conference will include discussions and presentations from several prominent Guyanese, including the CEO of the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-INVEST), Dr Peter Ramsaroop; Governor of the Central Bank of Guyana, Dr. Gobin Ganga; past President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), Mr Shyam Nokta, among other heads of Government Agencies and representatives from the Private Sector in front of close 500 delegates from 47 countries.

BK challenges a decision by GGMC to grant four quarry Licences for areas already applied for to ‘Shell’ Mohamed’s company to Hadi’s World Inc. of Lot 29 Lombard Street, Georgetown.

Hadi’s World Inc. is owned by local businessman Nazar ‘Shell’ Mohamed.

The Notices of Intention to Grant these four applications which were published by the GGMC in the Official Gazette in favor of Hadi’s World Inc. describes an area that overlaps the 2018 application made

by BK Quarries Inc. This 2018 application is for the same area (GGMC) over what … lands already for since 2018 for quarry challenging the decision which was granted to by the Guyana Geology appears to be a decision to issued to BK in 2014 for permit BK Quarries Inc. as prospecting and applied BK Quarries Inc. is and Mines Commission grant four quarry licenses

Prospecting License (PL-B70) on July 21, 2014. The PL B-70 was granted for 9,364 acres.

BK Quarries Inc. applied for a Quarry License on August 16, 2018, for the area subject to Prospecting License B-70. This Quarry License application was designated B-1000/000/18.

Two years later, after letters dated May 21, 2019, and July 17, 2019, the Commissioner of GGMC wrote to BK Quarries Inc. advising Con’t on Pg3

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Guyana Post Wednesday March 24, 2021

PEOPLE IN GUYANA’S BORDER WITH BRAZIL WANT THE VACCINE, DESPERATELY

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony

As Guyana continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the task force are calling on the Government to have more a person be vaccinated in Regions Eight and Nine.

This suggestion comes

knowing the proximity of Guyana to Brazil which has seen a large number of cases and a number of new variants of the virus.

This, however, according to the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, will not happen

unless Guyana acquires more vaccines to cater to a wider cross-section of people beyond who at this time are scheduled to be given the vaccine.

“It is something that we will certainly look at and again as we get more vaccines. We will

look at various ways of prioritizing these vaccines.”

This request by a person in the area comes knowing Guyana’s large borders that are not always fully secured from persons entering Guyana.

The Minister said that even with the threat of the spread in that region, this Ministry will not be able to vaccinate everyone until there are vaccines available and the utilization of the current surveillance network to monitor the situation.

“We have set up a surveillance network in the Rupununi and in Region Eight to detect any person that could cross. We would be testing them to detect whether people coming over are positive. SO, that type of monitoring will continue. We are also trying to reduce the number of people crossing. We know the challenges that Brazil is currently experiencing with the P1 Variant and certainly we would want

to reduce that influx of people.” Mr. Anthony added.

Brazil currently has over 10 million cases and a new variant of the virus popping up.

The Covid-19 crisis in Brazil has never been worse with nearly every Brazilian state has an ICU occupancy of 80% or higher and as of Friday, 16 of 26 states were at or above 90%, meaning those health systems have collapsed or are at imminent risk of doing so.

The seven-day average of both new cases and new deaths is higher than they have ever been.

In the last 10 days, about a quarter of all coronavirus deaths worldwide have been recorded in Brazil.

BK challenges a decision by GGMC to grant four.........

Con’t on pg2

that the application for B-1000-000-18 was “being considered seriously at the level of the Board of Directors”.

On January 9, 2020, BK Quarries Inc. agreed to meet with the GGMC and the Technical Sub Committee. The meeting took place on January 14, 2020, to discuss the application B-1000/000/18.

There were several commitments arising from the meeting, one such commitment from BK Quarries Inc. being that the company identifies 4,460 acres out of the total area (9,364acres) which was originally applied for.

BK Quarries promptly submitted a map to this effect.

There was another meeting on June 17, 2020, to follow up on the application B-1000/000/18.

The following day the company again info@guyanapostonline.com

submitted a map with the reduced acreage as discussed on 14 January 2020.

More letters were to follow. On July 2, 2020, GGMC requested from BK Quarries Inc. a detailed cartographic description of the reduced areas of interest.

It said that it needed this information to continue processing the application.

The request by GGMC was satisfied on August 6, 2020. Nothing happened. BK Quarries Inc. sent another letter to GGMC on December 9, 2020.

In the New Year, on January 11, GGMC sent a letter to BK Quarries Inc. contending that the application for the 9,364 acres exceeded the 4,500 acres approved by the GGMC for the favorable processing of application B-1000-000-18.

This was complied with by BK Quarries

Inc. which submitted yet again a map and cartographic details for the adjusted acreage. The correspondence was sent on January 12, 2021.

Eight days later BK Quarries Inc. received a letter from the GGMC stating that ‘all quarry licences extant and otherwise are to be reviewed by the Commission’s Board of Directors. GGMC also asked that patience be exercised by the quarrying company and that “should there be any additional requests pertaining to your application, you will be duly notified”.

All this changed with the publication of the Official Gazette dated February 5, 2021, which stated that GGMC had an intent to grant the four quarry licences to Hadi’s World Inc. of 29 Lombard Street, Georgetown.

Upon checking the areas

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gazetted, it was revealed that some of the areas being granted to Hadi’s World Inc. overlay areas already applied for by BK Quarries Inc. under licence B-1000/000/18.

The four applications submitted to the GGMC

by Hadi’s World Inc. were made only in December 2020. The efforts of BK Quarries Inc. began in 2014 with the granting of the PL B-70 and the subsequent application to have B-70 converted to a Quarry License in August 2018.

It should not escape notice that the last correspondence from GGMC to BK Quarries Inc. was dated January 20, 2021, and indicated that any further requirements of the GGMC would be communicated to the applicant.

At the most recent meeting of the GGMC’s Board of Directors to deliberate on the four

applications made by Hadi’s World Inc., the issue of the Gazette Publications dated 5 February 2021 was raised as the applications were yet to be approved by the Board. The notice of intention to grant as published in the official gazette was made without the applications being approved by the Board.

The four quarrying licences applications made by Hadi’s World Inc. were designated H-1000/03/2020; H-1000-000-2020; H-1000-001-2020 and H1000-02-2020. They cover a combined and contiguous area of 16,502 acres.

BK Quarries Inc. application B-1000-00018 was for 9,364 acres, an area that GGMC deemed to be too large for development, hence its request for the company to reduce the acreage applied for by

50%.

The Board has concluded that the publishing of the notices in the gazette, while the application was yet to be approved by the board, was improper and possibly illegal.

BK Quarries Inc. has since gone to its lawyers to voice its objection to the granting of these four licences to Hadi’s World Inc. on locations already applied for by the company.

The company had legitimate expectations that its application of 2018 would have been favourably considered and has cooperated with the GGMC in every way to satisfy the requirements of the commission.

It is therefore asking GGMC to withdraw the Notice of Intention to grant the licences to Hadi’s World Inc. and complete the processing and issuance of its 2018 application.

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Guyana Post Wednesday March 24, 2021

An open letter to Mr. Freddie Kissoon DEAR EDITOR, Kindly permit me a space in your letter column to write an open letter to Mr. Freddie Kissoon. For the record, Mr. Kissoon and I are not friends but for the short time I interacted with him, in the past, he was very helpful.

Mr. Kissoon had provided me before with sound guidance especially in the Evans Persaud issue I had at University of Guyana and I have no doubt that his opinion will be sound reference the questions I wish to seek his opinion on.

Mr. Kissoon, the General and Regional Elections results of March 2, 2020 were declared using Statements of Recounts.

The Statements of Recounts as the world knows were generated from an audit of the Ballot Boxes where serious anomalies, abnormalities and irregularities were

unearthed.

I, as a recount agent in Recount Station number five (5), saw boxes with no statutory documents to verify the legitimacy of the votes that were found inside. I saw a lot of unsigned oaths of identity. I saw names of persons who I know are dead, ticked off on the Official List of Electors which is an indication that they voted.

There were missing poll books which led to there being missing oaths of identity, employment letters and all the events that occurred at the respective polling stations. I saw a lot of unstamped ballots.

What worried me the most was the regular changes GECOM was facilitating during the Recount process as it relates to what actually constitutes a valid vote. Can you believe GECOM validated votes in the first week of the recount that were

objected to by counting agents and in the second week ballot papers of similar nature were invalidated?

Thousands of votes were counted and thousands were not counted even though they all had the same features.

Sir, in your opinion is this Government occupying office on the strength of democracy?

And considering what is mentioned above, would you say that the will of the Guyanese people is represented in our Government?

Can you define rigged elections and how different are rigged elections that you know of from this March 2020 elections?

Mr. Kissoon, I look There have been eight forward to your writings.

COVID-19 deaths over Thank you for this space the past eight days. Two Mr. Editor. more died yesterday.

Monday. Their deaths have pushed the total to Yours faithfully 218 Ganesh Mahipaul

COVID-19 death toll jumps to 218

…husband in custody

info@guyanapostonline.com

her husband, when the incident occurred on the Essequibo Coast.

The husband recalled that he and his wife were on a late-night outing when the woman allegedly jumped off the fishing boat and never surface.

He then reported the

from Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) who died at his home. A swab test was done on arrival to our medical facility, which revealed a positive result for COVD-19.

constructed ones.

Ranks searched the first shack, and no one was seen. They then were approaching the second, when voices were heard in the third and rank them immediately identified themselves.

During that moment, one of the occupants emerged with a gun discharged several runs at them. After the gunfire stopped, two males and a female lay in the shack with gunshot injuries, whilst one male escaped.

A sawn-off doublebarrel shotgun was found

at the scene.

The two dead men were later identified as Mazaruni Prison escapee, Imran Ramsaywack, and Ryan Jones Just over a month ago, the two along with Samuel Gouveia and Kenrick Lyte, escaped from the Mazaruni Prison.

All four escapees were behind bars for killings, with two of them facing death sentences.

Back then ranks on duty discovered the padlock to the entrance gate was tampered with. Further checks were made, and it revealed that two bars within the cell were cut.

A manhunt was launched. Ryan Jones’s father was charged for harboring the four men, while they were in Bartica.

Two Mazaruni Prison escapees shot dead

Woman goes missing after jumping off fishing boat

The Guyana Police Force has launched an investigation into reports of the missing woman, who would have jumped off of a fishing boat during a night out.

According to information coming from the police, the woman was at the time with

The latest fatalities are a 74-year-old female from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) who died while receiving care at our medical facility, and an 82-year-old male

matter to the police and a search party was launched to find the missing woman.

At the moment, however, as details remain sketchy police have since kept the husband in custody, as the investigation continues.

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Two Mazaruni prison escapees and a woman were shot dead during a shoot-out with police in the Better Hope, East Coast Demerara Backlands.

Reports so far suggested that the force last night received information that some escapees were hiding out in the area.

As such, a party of policemen went to the area which was observed to be an abandoned field in a bushy and swamped area. There were three wooden shacks on the field along with two partly