Officers during a field trip to a mine site, part of the upgraded training programme.

GUYANA Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), last week, completed training 25 of its officers on approaches to environmental management and concession monitoring.

It was to prepare them for field work within the context of the Low Carbon Development Strategy.(LCDS), GGMC Commissioner William Woolford said.

He said the syllabus included information on environmental management systems, conduct of environmental and social impact assessments, review of the relevant legislation and how to monitor mines for compliance.

Mr. Woolford said the programme gave the trained group tools to facilitate a change of culture within the mining industry.

“It was also in keeping with our thrust to raise the level of our environmental management and concession monitoring to internationally accepted standards,” he said of the five-day exercise that was conducted at the site of the former Omai gold mines.

It was in two parts, one focused on environmental management with the emphasis on social impact assessments and the other on concession compliance monitoring.

The participants, including a Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) staffer, were required to do environmental impact assessments (EIAs) as recommended for any new project.

They also looked at systems which set out procedures for environmental management and measures to be taken for documenting and ensuring that improvements put in place are sustained.

Concession compliance monitoring training concentrated on regulations and achieving compliance with them, concretised their understanding and gave cues how on how to deal with field situations.

“The main focus for them though, was training on how to ensure compliance with the regulations while convincing miners that they should see themselves as co-regulators with the GGMC, that they should see the environment the same way we see it and make sure it is not unduly damaged,” Woolford said.

The resource persons were consultant, Dr Paulette Bynoe and assistants, Ms. Denise Simmons and Ms. Jewel Liddel.

Geological engineer, Mr. Samuel Wright led the concession and compliance monitoring train the trainer course and the Project Administrator was Mr. Lennox Tucker of World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Woolford said the trained oficers will be deployed in the fields this and next weekend.

“They will be talking to the miners about environmental management and improvements; teaching them how they could think about environmental management and contaminants and mitigation, nudging them towards self- regulation,” he said.

Bynoe and Wright will accompany them in the field to evaluate how they perform in their interactions with targeted miners in the aftermath of their training.