Dear Editor
THE GGDMA wishes to address the issue of its executive member, Mr. Hilbert Shields being wickedly and scurrilously attacked, via the media, by a few with a hidden agenda.
It is the miners who have nominated its executive member [Mr. Hilbert Shields] of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association [GGDMA] to serve on the GGMC Board in 2017. Mr. Shields serves on the GGMC Board, representing the interest of thousands of miners by fighting the many trials and tribulations that affect miners. One such constant nightmare is the amount of time miners have to wait to get ordinary business done at the GGMC; most of the time they are being pushed around by the staff.

Recently Mr. Shields has been spearheading a search, on behalf of the GGMC Board, to situate a modern computerised system to be the foundation on which GGMC can build, in a timely manner, a transparent Mineral Rights Cadastre System. Such a system will track all mineral land applications in the GGMC from start to finish. The mineral rights registry will be open and publicly available in near real time to be viewed by anyone. The system will be robust, with built-in data integrity safeguards and at its heart will be accountability and transparency and ultimately public access to data via an internet portal. With a system like this, there will be less dependency on the human factor and should allow the GGMC systems to work free of interferences. Obviously, one significant upside is the weeding out of lots of corrupt practices at the GGMC.

This initiative must have surely upset quite a number of officers of the commission. Thus, the smear campaign based on leaked inaccurate information on Mr. Hilbert Shields, which the Kaieteur News seems to have unwittingly used as a vehicle for disinformation, in its publications of Wednesday’s January 3, 2018 Kaieteur News. While Mr. Shields is on the Boards of the GGDMA and GGMC, he is still a miner like everyone else; he has had rights to these lands via a Prospecting License that he has had since 2015; his application to convert to mining permits, some of which pre-date his call to the Board of the GGMC, is no different in size and process to any other miner.

However, the information published in the press is grossly inaccurate and twisted to suit a hidden agenda. The GGDMA therefore, will not sit idly by and have these cowards attack a leader in the mining community who has been an advocate for good and fair business practices, and an advocate against corruption.
Regards
Avalon Jagnandan
Administrative Manager
Guyana Gold & Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA)