Senior officials at the Lands Commission are coming under fire for what may have been a deliberate attempt to stall and deny Guyanese miners available land that they have applied for over the years.

One miner, Wallace Daniels, engaged Junior Natural Resources Minister Simona Broomes at a recent ‘Open Day’ to raise the issue which he believes amounts to corruption and favoritism.

Daniels said he applied for a piece of land to prospect and mine since 2012 but despite no contesting applications and the availability of the land, he faced a series of denial.

Broomes told reporters at her office on Tuesday that an investigation was immediately ordered by her Ministry when the allegations were aired by the miner. “The investigation came out that he was right, he did make the application… after careful examination of the matter, and this was done by land management and reported to me, we found that the area he had applied for was open and available and there was no other application other than his so it should have been processed,” Broomes said.

Daniels, who is a professional Land Surveyor, said his own knowledge and experience came in helpful against the Commission’s attempts to deny him land.

“I’m satisfied because I had to put up with this for a long time. I would say that somebody had something especially against me because I have heard of the same thing happening to other people but in my case I know the process, I am a professional in the same field so the trivial excuses couldn’t get by me,” he explained.

Daniels said he was personally pushed around by Danny Singh, the Chief of Land Management. Another allegation made by Daniels was that in December 2015 he received a letter by hand but it was backed dated to September and again claimed that the land he had applied for was unavailable.

The investigation found that the letter was inaccurate because it stated that he was not able to receive the property because of reasons which turned out to be false.

The letter was rescinded and the man’s application is now being processed.

“I as a Minister had to apologize to him for what had happened,” Broomes said, while reiterating that as far as possible, she would seek to correct wrongs that were done. She said it’s no secret what was happening in the past at the Commission. ”I did make it clear in my budget presentation that one of the things we are going to be stamping out is corruption. We will let the system and the processes follow.”

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