Business
Haiti: Gold Rush – but will it benefit the people?
“They say the company will need to use the river water for 20 years, and that all the water will be polluted,” continued the 41-year-old member of Haiti’s Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan (“Small Peasants Working Together”) peasant movement. “They say we won’t be able to stay here.”
“If we don’t organize and make some noise, nothing good will happen as far as we are concerned,” she added.
Haiti has not signed the international Safety and Health in Mines Convention or the voluntary Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, both of which – if followed – offer some protections.
So far, licences and permits have been issued behind closed doors, deals have been sealed secretly, and the test drilling has been carried out with no public scrutiny and little government oversight, by the state mining agency’s own admission.
“The government of Haiti does not give us the means we need to be able to supervise the companies,” Anglade confirmed in an interview while still head of the agency.
In addition, Haiti has one of the lowest royalty rates in the hemisphere, collecting only 2.5 percent of the value of each ounce of gold extracted. “A 2.5 percent royalty share is really low. Anything under 5 percent is just really ludicrous for a country like Haiti,” according to mining experts.
This article is a summary of an investigative series by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) which can be read in full here (http://www.ayitikaleje.org/18_01_ENG).
