Ivor English cannot have a role in GYEITI’s civil society – Transparency Institute

Last Updated on Sunday, 16 November 2025, 18:31 by Writer

Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc (TIGI) on Saturday said government’s appointment of gold miner Dr Ivor English as convenor of civil society and non-governmental organisations to pick a representative to sit on the Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) of the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GYEITI) is invalid.

“The EITI Standard prohibits persons involved in the extractive industries from representing Civil Society – and, therefore, this appointment of Mr English is null and void,” TIGI said in a statement.

The organisation said Mr English has major gold and diamond interests – 17 licenses for 19,586 acres of land for gold and diamond mining in the Cuyuni Mining District.

According to TIGI, those licenses were officially reported by GYEITI since 2017, and Dr English publicly disclosed to the media on 9 November this year that he may reactivate these mining licenses.

TIGI made known its position although the Ministry of Natural Resources said Dr English would not be a member of the MSG’s civil society component.

He is scheduled to preside over a caucus on November 20-21 at the Marriot Hotel for civil society to renew its representation on the GYEITI’s MSG.

Transparency Institute, which said it had kept abreast of the GYEITI, said that Policy Forum Guyana (PFG) had served “honourably” as the GYEITI-MSG civic convenor, with a robust procedure for nominations and selection of the MSG civic representatives.

Further, TIGI said those representatives “have well served” the GYEITI MSG up to December 2024.”

As evidence of this, it is noted that in the first validation process of the GYEITI which received a low score – the then Civil Society (Civic) component of the MSG consistently scored comparatively higher than the government and industry sectors, TIGI added. 

For his part, Dr English is on record as having defended his integrity saying that he would not allow himself to be engaged in conflict of interest.

He said bad weather had forced him to scale back his mining properties but did not rule out expanding, “I have properties but I am not mining heavily at the moment. Maybe in the future” he had said.