There are many challenges facing the gold and diamond mining industry at the moment and all the major stakeholders need to work together with some sense of urgency to ensure that these challenges are sensibly met for the good of the industry and the development of Guyana as a whole. The remarks were made by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds Minister, in charge of mining and minerals.
The Prime Minister said that the challenges include the need for improving mineral recovery,  the need for ensuring improvement in the social and moral  quality of life of the small miner , and most importantly, the challenge to all stakeholders  of finding the right pace for improving the level of operations, particularly with respect to negative environmental impacts.
Prime Minister Hinds said that technical challenges include moving towards the use of equipment better able to recover fine grains of gold , and moving towards processes which do not involve the use of mercury.
“We are basically using a sluice box , but we are having people now who have the equipment for better recovery of finer gold. We are quite possibly at the stage where this capability will ensure the sustainability of our operations. ”
He said too that it is likely that within the next three to four years, the purchase of mercury will be outlawed  and the industry should even now begin taking the necessary steps to cater for this eventuality.
“I don’t want people buying mercury illegally. I don’t want my friends to be interacting with people who sell forbidden goods. I am afraid of such relationships, so we have to move along and refine extractive methods which don’t use mercury; so we have this challenge.”
With  respect to social challenges, he observed that in  some villages along the coast, there are from time to time complaints  about young men going into the hinterland to look for gold and many of them coming back as monsters in the  community.
“They have no gold,  but they have HIV AIDS , maybe other STDs and a drug habit and so on. This is an important challenge to the sector which must be addressed by all stakeholders, because the main reason we go and mine is to improve the quality of life of all the workers in the industry.”
With respect to the challenge of the pace at which miners need to move to improve their operations, in relation to  negative environmental impacts, he said: “When you read about animals and species going extinct, usually they say that that species could not or would not evolve fast enough to keep up with the change”.
“One of the questions for a leader is how fast changes should be brought along. “A major  issue for any leader,   for myself,  for the Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC),  for the President of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA),  for all miners, is the pace at which we need to improve our operations so as to stay ahead of the negative criticisms.”
He stressed that this was an important challenge, since no one could know for sure what was the pace of evolution needed, maybe until another  20 years; but by then it might be too late to be helpful.
He stressed that as a result there was judgment involved .
“There  is need for debate;  there is need for open minds on this matter. So hopefully,  all of us, myself the GGMC , the GGDMA, let’s hope that we make the right judgment as to the pace at which we need to improve our operations .”