NO ROYALTY, NO RULES

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦ GUYANA

NO ROYALTY, NO RULES

The Kurupung Uranium Project and Guyana’s Regulatory Blind Spot

 Opinion By: The Board  ·  August, 2026

THE STATE NEGOTIATES WHAT IT HAS ALREADY GIVEN AWAY

Company filings on the Kurupung Uranium Project confirm what this news-media has long argued about Guyana’s extractive governance: the royalty owed to the Government of Guyana from any future uranium production has not been fixed. It will be “negotiated at the time that application is made for a mining permit” — a negotiation that can be deferred indefinitely, since applications may be filed “at any time during the term of a PL.”

Read plainly, this means the State of Guyana currently has no claim to any share of a resource historically estimated at 20.6 million pounds of uranium, sitting under 92.2 square kilometres of Region Seven, until the holder of the prospecting licence decides the moment is right to ask.

The contractor sets the clock. The regulator waits for it to ring.

We have written before about the opacity surrounding how exploration rights to Kurupung changed hands — from LIA Industries Pte. Ltd. of Singapore to U92 Energy Corp. of Canada — without the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) exercising any visible control over the transaction.

That finding stands. What follows extends it: the royalty vacuum is not an isolated omission. It is one symptom of a licensing framework that structurally cedes leverage to the licensee at every point where leverage should belong to the State.

PILLAR ONE: A ROYALTY WITH NO FLOOR

Guyana’s petroleum sector, for all its own well-documented deficiencies, at least operates within a negotiated framework anchored by precedent — the Stabroek Block production-sharing agreement, whatever its flaws, is a public, referenceable instrument.

Large-scale mineral mining under the Mining Act 1989 has no equivalent anchor. There is no statutory royalty rate for uranium. There is no benchmark percentage that GGMC or the Minister must not go below.

The rate is whatever is negotiated, whenever negotiation occurs, between the State and a single counterparty who has spent years — and by the time of application, potentially millions of dollars in drilling and evaluation — building the case for terms favourable to itself.

This is not a technicality. It means the government of Guyana’s return on a strategic, security-sensitive mineral is a function of negotiating leverage at a moment of the company’s choosing, not a matter of law.

 

PILLAR TWO: AN OFF-TAKE DEAL STRUCK WITHOUT THE REGULATOR IN THE ROOM

Before any royalty framework has been discussed, Gibraltar-based ROPA Investments Limited has already secured the contractual right to purchase up to 50 percent of the first 40 million pounds of uranium oxide produced from Kurupung — an option on 20 million pounds of production from a resource that has not yet cleared a mining permit, let alone entered production.

This news-media has previously established that ROPA and LIA Industries are related parties structured to present as arm’s-length counterparties in U92’s own acquisition filings.

GGMC was not a party to that transaction. It had no visibility into its terms and no opportunity to weigh how a privately negotiated off-take arrangement, agreed between related parties, might shape the economics of the very royalty the State will eventually sit down to negotiate.

A regulator that is absent from the deal that structures the resource cannot credibly claim to hold leverage over the value extracted from it.

PILLAR THREE: THE NATIONAL REPOSITORY THAT ISN’T REQUIRED TO RECEIVE THE DATA

GGMC describes itself, in its own institutional language, as the national repository for geoscientific data relating to Guyana’s mineral resources. The Mining Act 1989 does not build a mechanism equal to that mandate.

A prospecting licensee is obliged to submit work programmes and quarterly and annual operational reports. On relinquishment of licensed ground, the licensee must submit an evaluation report on the work undertaken. None of these obligations is the same undertaking as surrender of the underlying dataset — the drill logs, assay certificates, geophysical surveys, and resource modelling that constitute the actual commercial and scientific value of exploration.

The only point in the statute where “reports, analyses, and data resulting from investigations and studies” are explicitly required in full is at the application for a mining licence — the same discretionary juncture at which the royalty itself is negotiated.

Guyana’s only clear statutory mechanism for compelling both a royalty and a complete geological dataset from a uranium licensee is a single, optional filing that the licensee alone controls the timing of.

 

PILLAR FOUR: WHAT HAPPENS IF THE STATE SAYS NO

Consider the scenario a functioning regulatory framework should have already answered. GGMC and U92 sit down to negotiate a royalty rate. The company, having already sold forward an option on half its first 40 million pounds of production to a related party, has calculated its economics around a particular return threshold. GGMC, exercising the public interest it is charged to protect, holds out for a higher rate. Talks stall.

What then? The Mining Act offers no compulsory arbitration mechanism for this scenario, no statutory floor the Minister can fall back on, no default rate that applies absent agreement.

The Prospecting Licences run until 18th April 2027, extendable to 18th April 2029. The company can simply wait. It can let the clock run. If the licence lapses without a mining permit application ever being filed, the one statutory trigger that would have compelled surrender of the exploration dataset to the State never fires.

The company walks away — potentially still holding, through its corporate structure, a fully modelled uranium resource derived entirely from exploration conducted under a Guyanese state licence — while GGMC is left with quarterly activity reports and an evaluation summary.

No royalty. No enforceable claim to the data. No mining. And no accountability mechanism requiring anyone to explain why.

PILLAR FIVE: THE COMMUNITIES WHO WERE NEVER ASKED

None of the above accounts for the constituency this publication regards as the first and most fundamental stakeholder: the Indigenous and local communities of Region Seven. The Amerindian People’s Association has called for the Kurupung project to be halted outright, citing the total absence of public and community-level consultation before exploration rights were granted, transferred, and drilled against.

A regulatory framework that permits a foreign-held uranium resource to change corporate hands twice, secure a related-party off-take agreement, and commence a 5,000-metre drilling programme — all before Region Seven’s own residents have been meaningfully consulted — is not a framework failing at its edges. It is failing at its centre.

WHAT THIS NEWS-MEDIA DEMANDS

The pattern here is not new to readers of this news outlet’s ongoing accountability coverage: a regulator structurally absent from the transactions it is meant to police, a State whose return on a strategic mineral is deferred to a moment the extractor controls, and communities treated as an afterthought rather than a precondition. Kurupung differs only in the commodity — uranium is not gold, and the stakes of a genuinely opaque radioactive-minerals sector, in a country with no established uranium regulatory precedent, are of a different order entirely.

This publication calls on the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Minister responsible for Natural Resources to state publicly, and without further delay:

◊ Whether a minimum statutory royalty framework for large-scale uranium and radioactive-mineral production is under consideration, and if not, why not;

◊ What legal instrument, if any, compels U92 Energy Corp. or its subsidiaries to surrender full exploration data to GGMC in the event the Prospecting Licences lapse or are relinquished without a mining permit application;

◊ Whether GGMC was consulted on, or was even made aware of, the ROPA Investments off-take agreement prior to its execution; and

◊ What steps have been taken, or will be taken, to conduct genuine community-level consultation with the Indigenous residents of Region Seven before any further drilling proceeds.

The people of Guyana own these minerals. The law, as it stands, has not yet caught up to that fact.

— The Board

The Weekday-Crowd Anomaly Deserves Answers

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THE 592GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY &INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

The Weekday-Crowd Anomaly Deserves Answers

OPINION BY: Staff Writer

The Government’s Model Village consultations have produced an unmistakable political image: large, enthusiastic crowds gathered across the country to hear President Irfaan Ali, Cabinet members and senior officials outline plans and receive concerns from residents.

Public consultation is necessary. Citizens should have access to the people and institutions that make decisions affecting their homes, land, livelihoods, communities and futures. No fair-minded observer should object to Government going into communities and listening.

But the scale of the turnout—and, more importantly, the timing of these events—raises questions that cannot be dismissed by photographs, applause or celebratory press releases.

These are not weekend gatherings or evening town halls. They have largely been convened during ordinary working hours, when thousands of Guyanese are expected to be at offices, construction sites, farms, shops, factories, schools, public agencies, markets and private businesses. Yet substantial crowds have appeared, stayed for extended periods and engaged the President and Cabinet.

That is the anomaly.

Civil-society organisations understand the basic arithmetic of public participation. If one wants workers, parents, students, small-business people and ordinary citizens to attend a public forum, meeting, protest or demonstration, the event is normally arranged after the workday or on a weekend. The GenZ protest scheduled for 4:30 p.m. is an obvious example. Its timing is not accidental; it recognises that people must first complete their work obligations before they can exercise their civic rights.

Why then are state events capable of producing massive weekday crowds while independent civic initiatives must carefully accommodate people’s work schedules to secure even modest participation?

That question is neither mischievous nor partisan. It is a question of transparency, labour-market reality, institutional integrity and fairness.

No one should leap to the conclusion that every person at a Model Village event is unemployed, paid to attend, instructed to attend or politically mobilised. Crowds cannot, by themselves, establish any of those claims. Many people may be self-employed, retired, unemployed, underemployed, on shift work, conducting informal business, on leave, between jobs, or simply willing to sacrifice several hours to bring an issue directly to the attention of the President and Cabinet.

But those possibilities do not remove the need for explanation. They sharpen it.

If persons are taking unpaid time from work to attend, then the economic cost falls on households already managing the pressures of food, transportation, rent, utilities and other living expenses. If workers are being released with pay, particularly in the public sector, then taxpayers deserve to know the extent of that release and its cost. If private-sector employees are absent during productive hours, employers facing recruitment and labour-retention difficulties have a legitimate interest in knowing whether their workforce is being disrupted by state-sponsored daytime events.

And if attendance is facilitated—through public-sector release time, transportation, community networks, contractors, beneficiary groups, state agencies or political structures—then that too should be openly disclosed. Transparency does not weaken a Government that is confident in its public support. It strengthens the credibility of the process.

There is a second and still more troubling issue.

The roadshows have also become a venue for citizens to raise routine grievances: housing matters, land concerns, drainage, roads, employment, licences, welfare, community development and services that should ordinarily fall within the remit of ministries, regional administrations, neighbourhood democratic councils, municipal bodies and statutory agencies.

It may be politically effective for a minister or senior official to solve a problem in front of a crowd. But it is not good governance for citizens to believe that a travelling Cabinet is their most reliable pathway to administrative relief.

A functioning state does not require people to wait for the President’s motorcade, abandon a workday and stand in a crowd to obtain answers on matters that should be handled through permanent institutions. Citizens should be able to submit a complaint, receive acknowledgement, know which agency is responsible, obtain a timeline, monitor action and appeal delays or failures.

If a Model Village consultation is the only time an unresolved problem receives attention, then the roadshow is revealing the weakness of the institutions it is meant to complement.

The Government should therefore answer plainly:

◊ Why were so many consultations held during regular working hours rather than through a mix of evenings, weekends and after-work sessions?

◊ What was the verified attendance at each event, and how long did persons remain?

◊ Were public servants granted time away from work, and was that time paid?

◊ Were ministries, regional bodies, NDCs, contractors, state agencies, community groups or programme beneficiaries asked to encourage or facilitate attendance?

◊ Was transport, food, reimbursement, per diem, priority service or any other form of material support provided?

◊ How many persons attended with individual grievances rather than to discuss the Model Village programme itself?

◊ Which agencies had responsibility for those grievances before they reached the Cabinet roadshow?

◊Will Government publish an anonymised record of concerns raised, the responsible agency, the promised action, the deadline and the eventual result?

The Bureau of Statistics must also help clarify the broader labour-market picture. Headline unemployment figures alone cannot settle the question raised by large weekday crowds. The country needs regular, accessible data on underemployment, labour-force participation, informal employment, discouraged workers, working poverty and regional differences in employment opportunities.

Employers, too, have a perspective that should not be ignored. If the country faces a labour shortage in key industries, there must be some accounting of the productive hours lost when sizeable numbers of employees attend daytime public events.

The Government cannot celebrate full crowds while businesses quietly absorb disruptions, unless it is prepared to demonstrate that no such disruption occurred.

This is not an argument against consultation. It is an argument for consultation that respects the time, income and working lives of citizens—and for institutions that work every day, not only when the Cabinet arrives.

Government events should not be immune from the standards of accountability expected of civil society, private enterprise or any other public-facing institution. If civil society must schedule demonstrations and meetings after working hours to permit ordinary Guyanese to participate, then Government should explain how it secures remarkable weekday participation and at what cost.

The crowds may indeed reflect public enthusiasm. They may also reflect unmet needs, unequal access to public institutions, carefully facilitated mobilisation, or a labour market that is weaker and more precarious than official narratives suggest.

The public is entitled to clarity—not speculation, not slogans, and not staged impressions of success.

Profit Sharing Who said What,Who said Naught.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY &INTEGRITYJOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Profit Sharing Who said What,Who said Naught

OPINION BY: GHK LALL

Part One
Said Exxon’s Chief Mr. Darren Woods on July 31st:

“The success of this development has set a new standard for the industry, and frankly, has exceeded our own expectations. Delivering on tight schedules, at industry-leading cost – with strong reliability and optimised production – has resulted in recovering our capital and cost nearly two years earlier than anticipated, increasing NPV, and desaturating the cost bank.”

Congratulations to Mr. Woods.  He sounded like Henry Kissinger, a Bloomberg algorithm, and an ancient Babylonian astronomer combined.  Money collected ahead of time.  Why confuse a simple issue with NPV (net present value) and “desaturating the cost bank?”  Given Exxon’s great success story from Guyana’s oil, it is time also for Guyana to succeed from its own oil.  Mr. Woods spoke to his stakeholders.  Guyana’s Dr. Jagdeo has to speak to Guyanese.  I’m still waiting.  

Said Exxon’s SVP and CFO, Neil Hansen also on the same great July 31, 2026 date: 

“…as we mentioned, at this point, we’ve fully recovered the $55 billion of investment, along with all the operating costs and the way the contractor agreement works is we can recover that investment up to 75%. After that, the remaining production is shared 50/50 between us and the government of Guyana.”

 

Thanks, Mr. Hansen.  Guyanese need to watch this fellow.  Is Exxon going to bushwhack Guyana on the full profit sharing?  More sharply, what does he mean by “we can recover that investment up to 75%. After that….?  What is hidden in that sneaky “After that….?”  After that is 25 percent.  It is still percent left.  Watch these Exxon chaps, Guyanese.  Start thinking of the cost bank getting an infusion of some new billions.  

In March 2026: Said Exxon Guyana Country Head, Mr. Alistair Routledge:

We were anticipating sometime next year in 2027 that we were going to get to the point where we had recovered those historic cost probably largely because of just increasing volumes of production that were generating higher and higher revenues to offset the ongoing expenditures plus recover historic costs.”

“If you stay at the current oil price then it will happen this year based on the level of expenditures and the production that we anticipate so that’s a significant acceleration. What that then means is that instead roughly the 14 and a half percent that the country has been receiving by way of revenues into the Natural Resource Fund from the Stabroek production and revenues, what will happen is that percentage will significantly increase.”

Meet Mr. Routledge, Exxon’s Jagdeo.  Quantum mechanics, Exxon-style.  Why can’t none of these guys from Texas talk straight?  They are always qualifying their words, hedging their bets.  He can say “significantly increase” but has a problem with a full 50:50 profit sharing.  WTF!

Now that I hauled Dr, Jagdeo into the Exxon-Guyana profit sharing, what happened to him?  My apologies to he, the PPP and everybody.  Guyana is in the midst of tragedy.  Today, I point to this monumental development of Guyana repaying Exxon every cent of its US$55 billion.  He should be dancing on his head, given what’s involved.

In a genuine, no gimmicks, no nonsense 50:50 profit sharing between Exxon and Guyana, something stands out for me.  In that profit sharing scenario, Guyana would be raking in FOUR TIMES as many profit dollars than it is doing today.  Oil prices rise Guyana’s share is more.  Oil prices fall, Guyana still would get more than before.  Oil prices have to fall off the charts for Guyana to make less than past years.

Think of what any government, any leader can do with such an inflow of dollars into its hands.  Incredible, that Dr. Jagdeo is in church.  He cannot be unhappy about the possibilities: a dozen MV Ma Liska; even at US$60 a barrel.  But I exaggerate.  Moving on, what’s the problem with this full 50:50 profit sharing? 

Something is rotten in Georgetown.  Imagine: with that kind of money freed up, who’d care about PPP corruption?  Or third term?  Say something. sir.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MV Barima -Postmortem II -PM Phillips

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THE 592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM◊ GUYANA

MV Barima –Postmortem II -PM Phillips

Frontally: Prime Minister Phillips disappointed.  A soldier yielding ground.  Weakly.  Unnecessarily.  Pitifully. A leader who abandoned a vantage point that was his to hold.  He let go.  For what reward?  What honor?  Prime Minister Mark Phillips was a general. 

No general should descend to the level of stockade deodorizer.  A general is a bold leader, not a mindless follower. 

In this compulsory postmortem of PM Philips post the MV Barima tsunami, I try to be delicate, considerate.  Too many tears already flow in this brutalized Guyana.

I seek not to bury Mark Anthony Phillips.  I seek ways to glaze him, praise him, to raise him.  But how can I, when he flooded the consciousness of Guyanese with that one dreadful, painful, word.  Noise.  Noise, Mr. PM?  When people are blinded by emotion.  When they see red embers of danger and death lurking in every condition, every cranny.  Their rage roars.  They rise to their fullest height; ready to fight any slight. 

An army general of caliber should recognize a mutiny on his hands.  Mr. Phillips may have been the best general Guyana had at one time.  Show Guyanese that general is still alive, stirring, has something left in him.  Not to NOISE!  A former general should never stoop to a lackey’s level: ready for any dirty job.  I believe that former general, present Prime Minister Phillips still has it in him not to hear noise.  But to know how to defuse a volatile situation.  He should also know how he is being used because of who he is, and draw a line.  This will be the new way.  A standard set for president, second vice president, others (whatever their virtue, their vision.

He doesn’t hear “noise.”  No such word drips past his lips.  What he heard, should have sensed, were the deep-seated wraths of Guyanese who have had it with the PPP Govt.  In the gut!  In the eyeballs.  The man of war transforms into a peacemaker.  The prime minister attiring himself in princely respect.  If there was one man who could have put a stop to one kind of Guyanese called to do work that Untouchables wouldn’t touch, it was Mark Phillips. 

When all he heard in the post MV Barima cascading series of catastrophic failures was “noise” and was unbecoming enough to regurgitate it, he pitched headlong into ignominy.

He laid to waste a rare opening.  All he had to try, to put before the enraged, was this. 

We are all hurting.  We are all bent double by loss unknown and unimaginable.  By pain unlike before and unbearable.  I appeal for the best that’s within all of us.  Help me to deal with this disaster, this tragedy.  Let us stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this hour of supreme national trial.  Let us ready to bury our dead unified and dignified.  Let’s comfort our brothers and sisters with newly discovered sublime beauty of the spirit.  There’ll be time enough later for revisiting and rebuking.  For honest listening and authentic understanding

How spellbinding Mark Anthony Phillips could have been.  Not in the manner of the powerful politician he is.  Or overbearing as he could be.  Overwrought as he was.  But as man of the people rising to majesty’s peaks.  When the people were unhappy.  Driven to frenzies of fury.  He didn’t. 

It is Mark Phillips’ loss; a gem of a moment squandered for the cheap noise.  For depravity’s routine noise.  For politics gone obscene noise.  Should a man, a general, a prime minister, comport himself with flaring aggression, however it’s believed justified, when an impenetrable pall of grief suffocates, reduces to tears? 

I think not.  These discoveries came in this post MV Barima postmortem of Prime Minister Phillips.

I’d be of zero utility to PM Phillips, his political brothers, if I tell him what pleases his ear.  Not piercing, bludgeoning bars of noise that the circumstances demand.  But some make-believe symphony of insipidity.  At ease, mon general.  At ease!  Not I, sire!

The Barima Scandal: Governance by Secrecy, Theatre by Design

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THE 592 GUARDIAN◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM◊ GUYANA

The Barima Scandal: Governance by Secrecy, Theatre by Design

OPINION BY: STAFF WRITER

If the leaked proposal now in the public domain is authentic—and there is every indication that it is—the Ali administration has crossed from questionable judgment into outright contempt for transparency.

The revelation that a Dutch firm, Koole Onshore and Offshore (KMS), was quietly invited to submit a proposal to raise the sunken MV Barima days before a public Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued is not a minor procedural irregularity.

It strikes at the heart of public procurement integrity. It raises a fundamental and uncomfortable question: was the tender ever meant to be competitive, or merely cosmetic?

This is not a routine infrastructure contract. This is a vessel lying on the seabed with human remains possibly still trapped inside—lives lost, families grieving, and a nation demanding answers. Every decision surrounding the recovery must be beyond reproach. Instead, what is emerging is a pattern of pre-selection, back-channel engagement, and administrative theatre dressed up as due process.

The timeline alone is damning. The MV Barima sank on July 18. By July 28, a foreign firm had already submitted a detailed, 13-page proposal at the government’s invitation—complete with methodology, timelines, and an $8 million price tag. Yet the official RFP was only issued on August 2.

The logical inference is unavoidable: the government had already begun narrowing its preferred outcome before opening the process to scrutiny

This is not how transparent governance operates. It is how outcomes are managed.

The government may argue that preliminary outreach is standard in complex salvage operations. That argument would carry weight if such engagement were disclosed, structured, and extended to multiple firms in a documented and equitable manner. But secrecy negates legitimacy. If other companies were similarly invited, the administration must say so—immediately and unequivocally.

Silence, in this context, is not neutrality; it is complicity.

More troubling is the moral dimension. Families of the deceased and missing have been led to believe that decisions are being taken with care, dignity, and procedural fairness. Instead, what they are now confronting is the possibility that critical decisions were being shaped behind closed doors while public assurances were being carefully staged.

The government cannot have it both ways—claiming transparency while operating in opacity.

The technical aspects of the KMS proposal—parbuckling, buoyancy-assisted righting, recovery in one piece—may well be sound. That is not the issue. The issue is whether the process used to arrive at that solution is legitimate, fair, and defensible.

Even the most technically competent plan becomes tainted when born out of a compromised process.

And there is a deeper danger here. The recovery of the MV Barima is not merely an engineering exercise; it is a forensic necessity.

The vessel may hold critical evidence for the Commission of Inquiry. Any perception that its recovery was pre-arranged risks undermining the credibility of the entire investigative process before it even begins.

This is how public trust erodes—not in dramatic collapses, but in a series of calculated shortcuts justified in the name of expediency.

The Ali administration must now answer, clearly and without evasion:

⇒Who authorised the invitation to KMS?

⇒Were other firms similarly engaged prior to the RFP?

⇒What criteria were used to select KMS for early engagement?

⇒And why was the public not informed?

Anything less than full disclosure will confirm what this episode already suggests—that governance is being conducted in the shadows, while transparency is performed in the spotlight.

The families of the dead do not need theatre. They need truth. The nation does not need managed optics. It needs accountable leadership.

And at this moment, both remain in short supply.

Editor’s Note:

Under Guyana’s Procurement Act, Cap. 73:05, public procurement is governed by core principles of transparency, competition, fairness, and accountability. The Act establishes open tendering as the default method of procurement, with alternative methods—such as restricted tendering or single-source procurement—permitted only under clearly defined and strictly justified circumstances.

Section 25 of the Act outlines the conditions under which restricted or sole-source procurement may be used, including situations of extreme urgency, national emergency, or where only one supplier is capable of performing the contract. However, even in such cases, the procuring entity is required to document the justification, ensure that the process remains as competitive as practicable, and secure the necessary approvals, typically through the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB).

Critically, the law does not permit a procuring entity to engage a preferred supplier in advance and subsequently issue a public tender merely to regularize or legitimize that prior engagement. Such conduct, if established, would undermine the integrity of the procurement process and may constitute a breach of both the letter and spirit of the Act.

Additionally, the Act and accompanying regulations impose obligations for equal access to information among bidders, proper record-keeping, and the avoidance of any practice that could give rise to an unfair competitive advantage. Any deviation—particularly in high-value, high-sensitivity contracts involving public safety or national emergencies—demands heightened scrutiny and full public disclosure.

In this context, the sequence of events surrounding the MV Barima salvage operation raises serious questions as to whether the procedural safeguards required under the Procurement Act were observed, or whether the appearance of competition was substituted for its lawful execution.

THE 592 GUARDIAN

Round One to the People — But the Government’s Pandora’s Box Isn’t Empty Yet

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THE 592 GUARDIAN◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ◊ GUYANA

BOARD EDITORIAL

Round One to the People — But the Government’s Pandora’s Box Isn’t Empty Yet

Georgetown, August, 2026

By: Hem Kumar, Editor

The Government of Guyana has, for the first time since the MV Barima went down on July 18, done something that looks like listening. On July 31, the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD) issued a formal Invitation for Expressions of Interest for the salvage of the vessel — an implicit reversal of Prime Minister Mark Phillips’s earlier public position that “conditions” were not favourable for recovery, and that additional divers were unlikely to change the outcome.

That reversal did not arrive on its own. It arrived after the Amerindian Peoples Association picketed the Office of the President. After a Gen Z-led coalition held a silent vigil outside the same building. After Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed stood in front of grieving families and offered, publicly and repeatedly, to fund and facilitate the vessel’s recovery at no cost to the Guyanese taxpayer. After editorial pages — this one included — asked, in print, what the Government was afraid a floated MV Barima would show.

Round one belongs to the people of Guyana. Sustained public pressure, not government initiative, forced this outcome. That much should be said plainly, and credited to the families, the protesters, and the civil society organisations who refused to let the vessel — and the seventy-two lives lost with it, and the thirty still missing — disappear from the news cycle.

But round one is not the fight. The manner in which the Government has chosen to deliver on its own concession raises questions serious enough that the applause should be brief.

A Process Built for Delay, Not Urgency

The EOI MARAD issued is not an emergency mobilisation. It is a standard competitive procurement instrument, complete with a submission deadline of Friday, August 14 — more than two weeks after the notice was published, and a couple of weeks after the Opposition Leader first made his offer.

APNU parliamentarian Ganesh Mahipaul has laid out what comes after that deadline: evaluation of submissions for responsiveness, shortlisting, evaluation of bids, contract award, execution of the agreement, mobilisation of equipment and personnel, and only then the issuance of a commencement order. By his estimate — and it is difficult to dispute the arithmetic — actual salvage operations are unlikely to begin before late August, and quite possibly not until September.

We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) has made the same point in different words: the Government “buckled under pressure of the people,” but chose a procurement path that leaves grieving families waiting even longer for the answers they were promised.

“If there was ever a case that justified emergency procurement, surely the worst maritime disaster in modern Guyanese history is one.” — Ganesh Mahipaul, MP

Mr Mahipaul’s underlying argument deserves to be stated in full, because it is not an emotional appeal — it is an institutional one. Guyana’s procurement law permits emergency and sole-source procurement precisely for situations where the public interest demands immediate action.

The 592 Guardian has documented, repeatedly and on the record, this same Government’s comfort with emergency and sole-source procurement mechanisms for projects far less urgent than the recovery of a vessel that is now the final resting place of Guyanese citizens and the single most important piece of physical evidence in the country’s worst maritime disaster.

If the mechanism was available for lesser matters, its absence here is not an oversight. It is a choice. And the Government owes the country an answer as to why it made that choice.

Every Week Underwater Has a Cost

That choice carries a price measured in something other than money. Mr Mahipaul’s warning about evidentiary decay is not alarmist; it is basic marine forensics.

Salt water corrodes mechanical systems, degrades electronic equipment, and alters structural evidence over time. The Commission of Inquiry — whose composition and independence 592 Guardian has already had cause to question — cannot examine what has dissolved.

Every additional week the MV Barima spends on the seabed is a week in which the truth the country was promised becomes a little harder to recover, whether or not that is anyone’s intention.

 

The Offer the Government Never Answered

It bears repeating, because the timeline matters: Azruddin Mohamed’s offer to fund and facilitate the vessel’s salvage through a reputable international marine contractor, at no cost to the taxpayer, was public for days before MARAD’s EOI appeared.

The Government did not accept it. It did not formally decline it. It said nothing — until it produced its own process, on its own timeline, under its own name.

Whatever the merits of running a competitive procurement in the ordinary course of government business, this was not the ordinary course of business, and the silence in the interval invites a question 592 Guardian is not alone in asking: was the delay about due diligence, or was it about who gets to be seen taking Guyana’s dead out of the water?

We do not know. Multiple theories are circulating in Georgetown — that the delay serves to let compromised evidence lose its evidentiary value; that a competitive process opens room for financial arrangements a direct, funded offer would have foreclosed; that the Government could not tolerate handing the Opposition Leader a visible, unanswerable moment of moral authority ahead of the next election.

The 592 Guardian has not verified any of these as fact, and we will not print them as such. But their circulation is itself a symptom of a deeper illness: a Government that has, through its own conduct on this file and others, exhausted the public’s willingness to extend it the benefit of the doubt.

That erosion of trust is not the invention of a hostile press. It is the cumulative result of a commission sworn in behind closed doors, a memorial consent form circulated to families before any genuine consultation began, and a Prime Minister who told the country recovery was unlikely days before his own government opened a tender to attempt exactly that.

Do It Right, or Don’t Claim the Credit

If the Government insists on being the one to raise the MV Barima — rather than accepting an offer that would have put a salvage vessel over that wreck site weeks ago — then it owes the country a process that matches the gravity of what it is recovering.

That means emergency procurement, not routine tender. It means a public, dated commitment to when operations begin, not a rolling estimate. It means transparent chain-of-custody protocols for whatever the vessel yields, developed in consultation with the Commission of Inquiry rather than announced to it.

Anything less turns an act that should carry the dignity the victims are owed into one more exhibit in a pattern the 592 Guardian has now documented for two weeks running.

This is not business as usual. It cannot be treated as business as usual by a Government that spent the first two weeks after July 18 getting the basic facts of its own disaster wrong, correcting them days later, and asking the country to wait for a process it does not yet trust.

Round Two

The people won round one. The Government’s hand was forced, and the vessel will, in principle, come up. But a Pandora’s box of procedural discretion remains open in this Government’s hands — the pace of the tender, the composition of the evaluation, the handling of whatever the wreck yields, and the still-unresolved question of whether the Commission of Inquiry tasked with making sense of it all is itself independent and impartial, given what this Guardian has already documented about its own commissioners.

‘Round two is the accountability fight that does not end when the vessel breaks the surface. It ends when every official whose conduct — before, during, or after July 18 — bears on culpability has answered for it, and it does not end a moment before the Commission of Inquiry delivers findings the public has reason to trust.

The families of the MV Barima are still waiting for closure the Government has had the power to accelerate since the day Azruddin Mohamed made his offer. Every day of procedural delay from here is a day this Government chooses, and a day it will have to account for.

— The Board

Reassurance Is Not Evidence: The Fish-Safety Question the Minister Didn’t Answer

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THE 592 GUARDIAN • ACCOUNTABILITY • GOVERNANCE • PUBLIC RECORD

BOARD EDITORIAL

Reassurance Is Not Evidence: The Fish-Safety Question the Minister Didn’t Answer

August , 2026 ♦By The Board

Fishermen along the Essequibo Coast and vendors at Bourda Market are watching their livelihoods erode over a claim no one has actually tested. In the three weeks since the MV Barima went down off Essequibo with the loss of scores  of lives, a rumour has spread on social media that the fish sold in Guyana’s markets is contaminated by the disaster.

There is no scientific finding, published study, or government test result that supports this claim. There is also none that refutes it with primary data collected at the site. Both of those sentences are true at once, and the distinction between them is the entire story.

WHAT THE RECORD ACTUALLY SHOWS

Two institutional voices have now spoken to the rumour, and they arrived in the same place from different directions. The Guyana National Fisherfolk Organisation (GNFO) issued a statement over the weekend of August 1-2 arguing there is no scientific evidence that Guyana’s fish supply is unsafe, and noting, correctly, that the Atlantic Ocean spans roughly 106 million square kilometres and that commercial catch is not drawn from a single point on the map.

Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha followed on Tuesday, telling reporters the established fishing grounds fishermen actually work are far from the wreck site, that there has been no scientific analysis showing contamination, and appealing to the public to keep supporting the industry.

Both statements are geographically and logically sound as far as they go. Guyana’s commercial fishing grounds are a matter of public record and are not located at the Barima wreck site off Essequibo. A ferry sinking, however catastrophic in human terms, does not on its own contaminate an ocean.

The vendors losing income at Bourda Market and on the Essequibo Coast are being hurt by a claim that has no documented basis — including, notably, AI-generated images being recirculated as if they were contemporary evidence, which the 592 Guardian does not treat as credible sourcing in any context.

WHERE THE ARGUMENT BREAKS DOWN

The problem is not that Mustapha is wrong. The problem is that “no scientific analysis has shown contamination” is being offered as though it were equivalent to “testing has shown no contamination.” It is not.

The first is an absence of evidence. The second is evidence of absence. Guyana’s own Environmental Protection Agency operates a real-time water quality monitoring network for the country’s rivers and creeks, built specifically to detect contamination early and inform public health response. Nothing in the public record indicates that instutional, or any comparable marine and fisheries testing regime, was deployed at or near the Barima site in the aftermath of July 18.

This is the accountability gap the Minister’s Tuesday remarks did not close. A geography lesson about where fishing grounds sit is not a substitute for a water sample. An appeal to “good sense” is not a substitute for a laboratory result. If the government is confident enough in the science to ask grieving fisherfolk and struggling vendors to absorb weeks of lost income on the strength of that confidence, it should be confident enough to commission the testing that would settle the question beyond a minister’s assurance.

An appeal to good sense is not a substitute for a laboratory result.

THE QUALIFICATIONS QUESTION, FAIRLY STATED

Critics are right to note that Agriculture Minister Mustapha is not a marine biologist, toxicologist, or public health scientist, and that his portfolio covering Fisheries does not by itself confer technical authority to pronounce on contamination science.

That is a legitimate structural point about how the government communicates on matters requiring technical expertise.                              But it should be aimed precisely, not broadly. The correct response to an unqualified minister making a scientifically plausible claim is not to assume the claim is false — it is to demand the ministry produce the technical finding that would let the public verify the claim for itself, ideally issued by or attributed to the relevant scientific and public health authorities rather than delivered as a minister’s personal reassurance at a press conference.

Put simply: Mustapha’s underlying position — that the established fishing grounds are distant from the wreck and that there is no basis to believe the catch is contaminated — is very likely correct on the geography and the biology.

Guyana’s commercial fisheries do draw from grounds well removed from a single riverine wreck site, and ocean currents do not concentrate contamination the way social media rumour suggests. But “very likely correct” delivered without supporting data is not the same as a government fulfilling its duty to verify and disclose.

The gap between those two things is exactly where public trust is being lost, and exactly where it could be recovered.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

In the immediate aftermath of a maritime disaster of this scale, a baseline environmental response is standard practice internationally: ⇒Test the water at and around the site for fuel, cargo, and other contaminants

⇒Sample fish tissue from the surrounding area if there is any plausible pathway of exposure;

⇒And publish the results, whatever they show, so that reassurance rests on data rather than on a minister’s say-so.

There is no public indication this happened. Absent that, the Ministry of Agriculture is asking the public to trust an assertion it has not yet backed with its own evidence — a position no more scientifically rigorous than the rumour it is trying to dispel, even though the underlying claim is almost certainly right.

The 592 Guardian’s position is not that the fish is unsafe. The evidence available, including basic marine geography and the fishing industry’s own account of where it operates, suggests it is not. The 592 Guardian’s position is that “trust us, there’s no evidence of contamination” is an inadequate answer to a public health and livelihood question of this magnitude, three weeks into a national tragedy that has already exposed serious gaps in this administration’s crisis communication. Fisherfolk and vendors deserve a government response built on a published test result, not a press conference.

THE 592 GUARDIAN’S POSITION

We renew this news outlet’s  standing view that reassurance without disclosed testing is not a communications strategy the public should be asked to accept on faith, particularly from an administration whose handling of the Barima disaster has already required repeated correction.

We call on the Ministry of Agriculture, in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency and any relevant public health authority, to commission and publish water and tissue sampling from the waters surrounding the wreck site and the commercial fishing grounds nearest to it.

If the results confirm what the Minister has already said, that finding will do more to protect the livelihoods of Guyana’s fisherfolk than any appeal for calm. If they do not, the public has an even clearer right to know now rather than later.

— The Board

MV Barima -The Bridge was Empty

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

MV Barima –The Bridge was Empty

OPINION BY: GHK LALL

First, the disclosures.  This is owed to all Guyanese, none more than the departed in the star-crossed MV Barima.  Next in line are the tragedy struck family members; parents, spouses, children, above all.  Last in line in this first leadership examination is Pres Ali.  Prime Minister Phillips turn is coming.

In this postmortem, the objective is not to dissect Pres Ali and drain him of all plasma.  It is to touch him in soft strokes.  Inspire him to view his actions differently.  Guide him to motivate himself, operate differently, should, God forbid, another disaster visits.

Wherever Pres Ali was-in Canada, in a swamp, in a plane, in a luxury box, in the company of quality people-he had to come to a dead stop and race back to Guyana.  If he was in a plane that might be problematic.  In all other settings, it would have to be the same controlled urgency to his movements.  Except for one.  The one exception I would make to Pres Ali staying one minute longer wherever he was on that horrendous Saturday night, Sunday’s predawn hours, would be as follows. 

The president is out of it, due to serious attention needed.  He was not, and I am grateful to the Almighty, the merciful and the benevolent.  Once he was mobile, in the fullness of his senses, it had to be to Guyana for Pres. Ali.  A charter had to be found.  Leader to leader that should have been very doable.

He and his retinue, his wider circle, may not see matters this way, but he could not distance for a second more than necessary.  With knee bent before God, I submit to Guyanese what I think.  Pres Ali distanced.  Not for long.  But long enough.  He belonged in the company of the Guyanese people. 

No other company could compete for his time and attention.  Nor the lushness of his presence in the hours after that MV Barima Saturday Night Catastrophe of a unique kind. 

It qualifies as a catastrophe in my thinking.  So, when he came all solemnity and warmth, he was already cold in the consideration of citizens traumatized and reeling.

For the record, I repeat: a president is not a private citizen.  A former president is.  The head of a sitting head-of-state is the property of his people.  I see nothing radical in these assertions.  They are inseparable from the role.  It’s not given to pantomime.  Or phantomlike disappearances and reappearances.  There was Brazil before, if recollection serves well.  A president has dotted lines to sign, and lines which he must not cross.  His protocol officers should inform him accordingly.

Pres Ali may be the frontrunner for Guyana’s worst president ever.  When the MV Barima was engulfed in an unconquerable avalanche of water, Excellency Ali had a glorious opportunity to be remembered as Guyana’s most inspiring president ever.  Like I said in the first lines, I do not judge Pres Ali.  Nor is he hoisted aloft.  Guyanese get that duty.  Since the first days of his assumption of the presidency, Excellency Ali has cast a broad shadow.  On the night and morn of the MV Barima being sucked into the depths by forces that hurled aside resistance, Pres Ali cast no shadow.  His shadow was a fairy of the imagination.  His substance was invisible, sprawled on the deck of conjecture.

Where was Guyana’s president in the hour when an SOS calls?  What could be so vital that the dead is made to wait, and the living to wrestle with their demons?  The MV Barima could have been Pres Ali’s finest hour.  Regrettably, his clock could find no minutes making it his dampest.  When the MV Barima went down with the lives of over 100 Guyana lost, Pres Ali should have rose and soared.  He had to be found first.  In retrospect, he was the first unsounded toll.

El Niño Is a Governance Test, Not Just a Weather Event

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ◊ GUYANA 

El Niño Is a Governance Test, Not Just a Weather Event

OPINION BY: Staff Writer

Guyana is entering a season that demands more than warnings about heat and dryness. The Hydrometeorological Service has already said the country should prepare for strengthening El Niño conditions, hotter-than-normal weather, fewer wet days, and as many as 80 hot spell days this year, with the greatest exposure in Regions 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10. 

The same advisory warns that reduced rainfall and higher temperatures are likely to stress crops, weaken pasture quality, raise livestock water needs, and increase the risk of water shortages.

El Niño is a Governance Test, not just a Weather Event That means this is not simply a climate bulletin. It is a food, income, and governance problem. If government response remains narrow, delayed, or rhetorical, then the burden will fall on citizens through higher prices, reduced production, and weaker household purchasing power.

 The public has a right to know whether the State is treating this as a serious national emergency or merely as another seasonal inconvenience. The evidence suggests that the risk is already visible. Hydromet has warned of drier conditions, prolonged dry spells, elevated temperatures, and short-term drought conditions in parts of Regions 8 and 9, with localized flooding still possible in low-lying areas. 

In other words, Guyana must prepare for both drought and flood stress at the same time.

 The Budget Must Now Be Tested

The government has repeatedly presented Budget 2026 as a major investment in food security and resilience. In January, the administration said agriculture would receive $113.2 billion, with $81.9 billion going to drainage and irrigation, $3.3 billion for other crops and technical support, and $745 million for agro-processing and storage-related support.  It also said agriculture and water spending was part of a broader effort to strengthen food security and drainage systems.

Those allocations are now under public scrutiny. A budget is not a talking point; it is a contract. If the country is now facing known El Niño risks, then citizens are entitled to ask whether the money was spent on genuine preparedness, and whether the promised infrastructure and support systems are operational.  

That question matters because the same government has claimed Guyana can fully feed its population and that agriculture is central to national resilience.  Such claims cannot be made while the country remains vulnerable to predictable climate shocks without a visible, funded, public response. Resilience is proved in action, not in slogans

What Authorities Must Explain

The Ministry of Agriculture must explain what specific El Niño measures were funded under Budget 2026, how much has been released, and where the projects are active. Farmers need to know whether there is drought-resistant seed distribution, irrigation support, technical extension, and region-by-region advisories. Hydromet has already made clear that crop stress and reduced pasture quality are expected outcomes, so the ministry cannot wait for losses to occur before reacting.

The Ministry of Finance must disclose what contingency planning exists for inflation, food-price spikes, and support to vulnerable households. If imports become more expensive because of global weather disruption, transport costs, or tighter regional supply, then the public should know what fiscal buffers are in place.

The absence of a public protection plan would amount to a policy failure, not a natural inevitability.  

The Ministry of Trade and Commerce must state how it will monitor food prices, prevent hoarding, and ensure that market behavior does not exploit scarcity. Citizens should not be left to discover that the price of basic food has risen only after the damage is already done.

Transparency on monitoring is as important as the monitoring itself.  

Hydromet, the Guyana Water Incorporated, the local government authorities, and the disaster-management system must also stop operating in silos. Hydromet has already described the likely impact on water resources, agriculture, heat stress, and wildfire risk.  That information must be converted into coordinated national action, not left as an isolated technical bulletin.

 What Citizens Should Watch

Citizens should insist on a public action plan that names the lead agencies, the budget lines, the geographic hotspots, and the trigger points for intervention. The plan should show what happens if rainfall falls below a threshold, if food prices spike, if water levels decline, or if crop stress becomes severe. Without trigger points, response becomes improvisation.  

They should also demand regular public updates, not occasional reassurance. The government should publish food-security information, price trends, farmer advisories, and water-risk updates in plain language. That is especially important because the most severe effects will not arrive all at once. They will accumulate quietly through rising costs, shrinking supply, and tighter household budgets.

This is also why local communities must be engaged early. Small farmers,hinterland residents, market vendors, household gardeners, school administrators, and public-health officials all need targeted guidance.

Heat stress, water scarcity, and transport disruption are not abstract risks; they are practical problems that will affect daily life.  

 The Failure That Must Be Avoided

The greatest danger is not only El Niño itself, but a familiar national habit: waiting for the crisis to become visible before treating it as urgent. That approach is costly, unnecessary, and unfair to the people who can least absorb the shock. If food prices rise, if water becomes harder to secure, or if farmers lose productivity, then citizens should be able to trace the failure back to specific offices that had both warning and budget.  

The public should not be told that all hardship is weather-related. Weather is the trigger; policy determines the depth of the damage. Guyana now has enough warning to act, enough money allocated to justify action, and enough institutional responsibility to be held accountable.

This is the moment for the authorities to prove that their promises mean something. The nation does not need more declarations of resilience. It needs a visible plan, disciplined execution, and honest public reporting so that families, farmers, and businesses can prepare together and weather the fallout with less pain.

Readiness Is Not an Occasion — It’s a Standing Duty

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ¤ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ¤ GUYANA

Readiness Is Not an Occasion — It’s a Standing Duty

OPINION BY: Staff Writer

The Watooka deployment shows the State can move fast. The MV Barima disaster shows what happens when it doesn’t have to.

On August 4, 2026, the Vice President’s public outreach at Watooka House in Linden met a wall of protest. Barriers went down. Gates were forced. And within a short window, the machinery of the Guyanese state answered in full: GDF Coast Guard, the Police Marine Unit, and elements of the Joint Services on the ground to secure the Vice President and his entourage.

No one disputes that the safety of state officials matters. What the  592 Guardian is asking — on behalf of the families of over 100 people who did not come home from the MV Barima — is why that same machinery, with those same institutional muscles, which was reportedly less than 2  hours away from a stricken vessel and a distress call placed at approximately 10:00 p.m. was not operationalized in a similar manner? 

THE EXCUSE THAT DOESN’T HOLD

The predictable defense is that Watooka was scheduled and Barima was not — that planners had daylight and lead time for one, and only a dark river for the other.

We have made this argument’s rebuttal before, and we make it again here in sharper terms: a standing military and security apparatus does not get to claim surprise. Readiness for the unexpected is the entire premise of what these forces exist to do, in Guyana as everywhere else. 

“A Coast Guard that cannot answer a night distress call is not an underfunded Coast Guard having an off night — it is a Coast Guard that has failed at its only non-negotiable function.”

 

GUYANA HAS EVEN LESS EXCUSE THAN MOST

This is not an abstract, textbook point for this country. Guyana’s Joint Services live under a standing, unscheduled threat posture already — repeated incursions and shooting incidents along the Venezuela border have required exactly the kind of no-notice, any-hour readiness that a night-time maritime distress call also demands.

The State cannot simultaneously maintain that its forces are postured and prepared for sudden hostile action across the western border, and then explain away a slow response to a sinking ferry as an unavoidable casualty of the hour.

Either the readiness exists as a standing condition — in which case it should have reached the Barima that night — or it does not, in which case the country deserves to know what, exactly, all the preparedness rhetoric around border security has actually bought it.

WHAT TODAY’S DEPLOYMENT PROVES

We are not asking the State to explain why it protected the Vice President today. That response was appropriate. We are asking the State to explain why the same coordination, the same speed, and the same command reflexes were not already the baseline — every night, on every river, for every vessel — before 179 people needed them and did not get them in time.

THE QUESTIONS BEFORE THE COMMISSION

These are not accusations. They are questions the Commission of Inquiry has both the mandate and the obligation to answer, plainly and on the record:

  • Could a Watooka-level response have reached the MV Barima in to save additional lives?
  • What emergency response systems were actually in place and operational on the night of July 18?
  • Were the State’s legal obligations on vessel inspection, maritime safety, and emergency preparedness fulfilled — not in principle, but in fact, that night?                                                                                       

The people of Guyana have now watched their state move with speed and coordination when the safety of an official was on the line. They are entitled to ask why the same was not true when the safety of  one hundred and seventy-nine ordinary citizens was on the line. Preparedness cannot be occasion-specific. Accountability cannot be either. ONE GUYANA?

— The Board