Issue of Spanish treasures back on House agenda
BALFORD HENRY, Observer staff reporter
Saturday, February 03, 2007
THE issue of the salvaging of the rich treasures believed to be aboard 300-year-old sunken Spanish galleons in Jamaica's south coast waters is back on Parliament's agenda.
Opposition Leader Bruce Golding on Tuesday tabled several questions in the House of Representatives, seeking answers from Minister of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture Aloun Assamba about a search for the treasure which was abruptly ended by Admiralty Corporation, an operating subsidiary of Atlanta-based Admirtalty Holdings, after five years.
Admiralty was granted the licence in controversial circumstances in 1999. The abrupt end to the search was the result of a row which developed between Admiralty and the government in 2005 over the salvaging of a bounty estimated then to be worth about US$1.2 billion.
Admiralty claimed then that the bounty could be brought to the surface, if it could only disengage from "bureaucratic entanglements" imposed by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT).
The trust insisted that the company, among other things, needed to find an approved director of archaeology, who it said would need to prepare and submit an operations plan for the scope of work to be done. It said, too, that the company needed to employ a conservator to take care of any artifacts found and finalised, finalise and get approved a fisherman's awareness plan, and pay performance, conservation and preservation bonds as required by their licence.
Admiralty pulled out instead in 2005, and since then nothing has been heard about the treasure.
However, Golding has asked the following questions of Assamba:
. Will the minister advise what was the outcome of the search for sunken treasure conducted by Admiralty Corporation off the south coast of Jamaica under a licence granted by the government in 1999?
. Has a value been determined for the treasures that may have been located?
. Has the government taken any decision with regard to further searches being conducted or retrieving such treasure as may have been located?
At the time of the Admiralty pull-out, Maxine Henry-Wilson was the minister of culture. However, since March, 2006, Assamba has assumed the portfolio.
This is not the first time Golding has raised issues concerning the treasure hunt. In 1999, as leader of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), he raised strong objection to the way in which the government had granted a licence to Admiralty Corporation to recover treasures from Jamaican waters.
Golding said then that the government's long-established policy regarding historic wrecks was changed to facilitate the deal without the Parliament or the public being made aware of the change.
Golding had also charged that the proper procedure would have been for any policy changes to be presented to Parliament and for the government to signify its willingness to consider appropriate proposals for the recovery of treasures and artifacts.
