Bauxite industry decisions must be supported by PPP/Civic & PNC -Lumumba Stabroek News April 12, 2000 "The time has come for us to put who is to be blamed at rest," for the decline of the bauxite industry, People's Progressive Party/Civic MP Odinga Lumumba has said. Lumumba declared that a decision on the issue of the stagnant bauxite industry must be agreed on by both parties (meaning the PPP/Civic and the PNC). He is also calling for countrywide debates on the future of the bauxite industry because the industry is operating at a loss and is being subsidised by the government. The opposition, he said, talks about power-sharing, this is a good opportunity to talk about blame-sharing. Proclaiming his support for the national budget last week during the budget debate, Lumumba said that as the need for bauxite decreased, the operations in Guyana should have been closed down years ago. He said that even though bauxite revenue has decreased, workers are given increases in salaries when in actual fact there should have been a freeze on wages and salaries. Both former presidents Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte "understood that BERMINE (the Berbice Mining Enterprise) and LINMINE (the Linden Mining Enterprise) had to stay because these companies represent the aspirations and hopes of thousands of families," he said. In addition, they were the partial power base of the People's National Congress (PNC) and closure would have meant economic genocide for Linden, New Amsterdam and other bauxite communities as well as political turmoil in the PNC, Lumumba observed. Stating that the time has come to put who is to be blamed at rest, he said that when a Japanese company (C-ITOH) offered to purchase the company for the sum of US$40 million under the Hoyte administration, "one person below Almighty God torpedoed this exercise." Not naming anyone, the person, he said, who torpedoed the purchase was a man in this country "who some say can show that one plus one equal three." The C-ITOH plan would have absorbed Guyana's bauxite debts, created other industries, led to a special international duty free zone in LINMINE and accepted the responsibility for infrastructure for LINMINE, he said. The C-ITOH, which he said came with the World Bank's blessings, Japanese Import and Export support and backing from the Hoyte administration was, he claimed, the number two trading company in the world at the time. He said that in spite of the support from ministers in the Hoyte administration, the purchase was torpedoed. Contending, too, that there are forces which are antagonistic to the industry in the country, Lumumba said that any purchaser who comes to buy the local bauxite companies, LINMINE in particular, will reduce staff by 50 per cent. "The PPP/C will be faced with a human calamity if it agrees to any proposal that will send dozens of workers home. We will be accused of racism," he said, adding that "it is a question of political stability and social consequences." (Miranda La Rose)