By Mabinty M. Kamara
Civil Society Groups have called on the media through the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, (SLAJ) to improve on their participation, interest, and reporting on the Sierra Leone Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (SLEITI) process.
SLAJ is a member of the SLEITI- Multi-Stake Holders Group.
Speaking at the SLEITI-MSG pre-validation workshop held in Freetown on Thursday 17th March 2022, Cecelia Mattia a Civil Society representative on the MSG said the media has been very slow or not committed to taking the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) process as part of their responsibility, except when they are called upon.
“The Media should run programmes funded by them (the media) in their respective media houses,” she said.She expressed hope that Sierra Leone will do very well in the validation process.
Another CSO representative, Joseph Rahall applauded the SLEITI Secretariat on the work done so far in relation to the EITI validation process.
He called on the media to engage MSG members, do investigative stories, saying that media reports and publications online and in print give more credence to their work in the eyes of the international community as they would be regarded as independent. He also called on his counterpart CSOs to bring the EITI discourse into their community engagements.
In response, Mohamed Konneh, suggested that the MSG engage individual media houses and train them to be interested in the EITI process so they can produce independent stories in relation to the extractive sector in the country.
Giving an overview of the validation workshop, Anny Lansana said the assessment was done based on the 2019 EITI standards. She said Guinea, Senegal, and other countries have already passed the validation with good scores. She said the template will contribute to filling the existing gaps and work from where they left in their last meetings.
In his statement, a representative of the Chamber of Mines, Isaac Tom Coker assured of the Chamber's support and participation towards the MSG.
The MSG chair, who is also Minister of State in the Office of the Vice President, Francess Piage Alghali noted that the government has been supportive of the MSG activities. She said the validation is about the template as well as the report. This she said will help MSG members to see what they have done over the years and what they wish to do in the coming years. She also noted that it will help improve the EITI process in Sierra Leone. The Minister said that the country has experts on the MSG that can complete the validation template.
The templates which Sierra Leone is working on completing have three requirements which include, stakeholder’s engagement, transparency and outcome, and impact. Country scores range from 0-49 which is low, to 93-100 regarded as very high. Sierra Leone is hopeful of scoring good grades based on what has been done so far in terms of implementation and government support towards the process.
Validation is the EITI’s quality assurance mechanism, through which implementing countries are assessed on their ability to meet the provisions of the EITI Standard. Accordingly, Validation is a fundamental aspect of the EITI and further seeks to promote dialogue and learning at country level including providing a platform to communicate progress of EITI implementation.
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