Cortours, bureaucracy and the border
Editorial
In our Wednesday edition we reported that Cortours, the eco-tourist resort with facilities at Wanatobo and Cow Falls on the Corentyne river which opened in 1997, has folded. It is yet another case of a foreclosure. Various reasons were cited by the director, Mr Motee Singh (whose family also runs a logging company in the area) for the collapse of the operations, among which were included bureaucratic ineptitude, the border situation with Suriname and the recent flooding. According to Mr Singh, the business could have been saved if the site could have been made accessible by land. He was reported as saying that his company had applied more than four years ago for permission to build an airstrip at Cow Falls, and that a year later, the late Minister Shree Chan had told him to proceed with the strip, and that he would "talk to [Minister] Anthony Xavier," who had responsibility for Works and Hydraulics. Although he began clearing the land, it was interrupted by border difficulties with Suriname. After the Civil Aviation Department came to learn of the clearing activity, he said, he was informed that it was illegal, and was told to cease operations. He also discovered that the file containing the lease application for land for the strip, which had been made four years previously to the Lands and Surveys Department, could not be located, and he was asked to reapply. In addition, he alleged, he had tried unsuccessfully to meet with President Jagdeo. Cortours appears to have been no more fortunate in its attempts to get a multi-purpose road built for tourism and logging, a proposal which dates back twenty years. One might ask what was wrong with the river as a highway? The answer to this is that Surinamese aggrandisement on the Corentyne has undermined both the tourist and the logging industries, among others. The Suriname military had stopped and threatened his operations, said Mr Singh, and he had remained silent in the past in order to ensure good relations. He had now ceased to transport logs via this route. Whether Cortours could have been made viable had the Government been efficient and co-operative, is difficult to estimate from the outside, but at the very least it appears in this instance as if its various arms operated incompetently and in a less than business-friendly manner. Accounts of this kind belie the administration's oft-repeated assertion that it is encouraging investment. Presumably it wants to, but clearly it has little idea of what is necessary, bureaucratically speaking, to make that desire a reality. And as for the frontier, it is another example of how much border security is bound up with our economic well-being. First we lost control of the Cuyuni to the Venezuelan National Guard, despite the fact that the whole of that river as far as the Venezuelan bank is our territory. Guyanese miners were harrassed on the river and denied access to fuel by the National Guard, and most of them have since de-camped. Then there was the CGX eviction, Surinamese bellicosity on the Corentyne, the pressure from Caracas over Beal and the declarations of intent with regard to the Guyanese maritime zone off Essequibo, which appear to have chased off two oil companies. Through all of this, the Government has appeared ineffectual. As far as the Corentyne is concerned, how much longer do Guyanese engaged in legitimate pursuits on the river have to be subjected to aggression from the Suriname military? The collapse of Cortours is one of the more spectacular business failures in the area in which the hostile actions of our eastern neighbour have allegedly played a part, but a whole host of economic activities is currently being affected by the border situation. This surely cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. Will the Government tell the nation just when the promised patrol boats are coming?
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