The health of Guyanese manganese workers must be given priority over profit

Dear Editor,

Once again, the government is planning to mine manganese with a restart planned for April of 2021. In the previous administration, there was the death of Chinese workers and the toxic and unhealthy situation was attributed to bats. With the reopening of the mines, new safeguards must be put in place to prevent the reoccurrence of health issues, especially those attributed to the direct unhealthy and toxic aspects of manganese mining. It has been proven that this industry is unsafe for the environment as well as nearby communities. The deaths and illnesses caused during the first attempt of extracting this mineral does not provide a high expectation for a safe and environmentally friendly undertaking with a company that has a poor history of keeping their workers safe.

The last time quite a bit of information was swept under the rug, and now it appears that the new government has forgotten what had happened and the additional peril that can be caused by manganese mining. Guyana cannot fly Guyanese workers out of the country and hide the information of what has made them ill as Bosai did the last time. The health and safety of the 400 Guyanese workers expected to be hired must be given priority over profit. Ensuring this will be difficult in such a low margin endeavour, where increasing profit provides an incentive to cut corners. The EPA needs to be extremely strict if this project is to be seriously considered. No one wants a generation in Matthew’s Ridge whose brain is neurologically impacted due to dangerous manganese pollution. This is not a trivial undertaking and if recent history repeats itself, the area may be in for yet another tragedy.

Yours truly,
Mr. Jamil Changlee