By Mohamed T Massaquoi
A land lease agreement involving the agribusiness firm Natural Habitat has caused serious rift among leaders in the Pujehun District, south of the country.
The Member of Parliament representing Constituency 091, Sidie Tunis, was at loggerheads with the District Council Chairman, Sadiq Silla, over the agreement which the lawmaker said he was vehemently opposed to.
Natural Habitat is a group of companies that engages in organic farming with particular focus on palm oil production. It is headquartered in the Netherlands and, according to information on its website, operates in Ecuador and Sierra Leone.
In Sierra Leone it has leased the entire available land space in the Makpele Chiefdom which falls under Constituency 091. The company recently unveiled its Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and, last week on April 25, it presented the same report to the community as required by the laws governing environmental protection.
Mr Tunis described the agreement as “fake and illegal”.
The EHSIA, also called Environmental, Health and Social Impact Assessment,is an assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or project prior to full implementation of the proposed action especially by large scale investments in the agriculture, mining and extractives sectors.
“I categorically made it clear to the company that in my opinion even though the consultants did a very good work, the premises on which they did their investigations were wrong,” Tunis told Politico in an interview on the sidelines of the Pujehun meeting.
He said the land lease agreement was not legal due to the fact that only few people signed the document. He said the interest of the landowners was his central focus and that this wasn’t seen to be been protected.
“In this particular situation the interest of the community people was not mentioned in the land lease agreement document which was why I am strongly challenging it,” he said.
Tunis said he needed development and the presence of the company in his constituency would be good but only if the legal bases of which the company was operating was strong and acceptable to everybody. He called for more discussions on the way forward on the issue.
Pujehun District Council Chairman, Sadiq Silla, said the land lease agreement wasn’t an issue. He told the public disclosure meeting in Pujehun that their concern now was on the environmental and social impact assessment of the project.
Silla warned MP Tunis against incitement by his pronouncements. He said he was a development oriented person who was ready to bring investors in the district in other to improve on the lives of his people.
“Nobody…in this district has ever stoodfor the protection of the rights of these people than I do and I will always do so as their political leader,” said Silla. He singled out the people of Gumawoma section as posing the most challenge to authorities, describing them as lawless. But this was refuted by the MP.
A major bone of contention was the period of years the agreement covers – 99 years. This, Tunis said, he would never allow to pass.
At the Pujehun meeting, the resident minister south, Muctaru Conteh also warned the MP against incitement and urged him to focus on development for his people, stressing that as a government they would not sit by and allow their people to suffer in the hands of investors.
But the MP insisted the current deal and how it’s been handled was bound to cause problem in the near future.
“Yes we want investment; yes we want development; but I don’t want a repeat of Socfin…Socfin is a time bomb,” he said.
Socfin is another agribusiness firm which is in the MalenChienf which is also in Pujehun, and where disagreements between the land owners and the company have led to deaths and destruction.
Earlier this year six protesting land owners were jailed after a protracted case between them and the company.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Sierra Leone has cautioned against rushing the agreement with regards Natural Habitat, urging the various stakeholders to sit and discuss and reach a consensus.
Alhaji Sheku Kanneh, who represented EPA at the Pujehun meeting, said their role was to look into the affairs of the environment especially on its physical and social challenges on the lives of the ordinary people.
“Every damage on the physical environment must go along with some reasonable commitment,” he said, adding that in their findings they were able to look into the health related issues and even psychological effects on landowners.
Kanneh encouraged the people to critically look at the document and make a critical judgment, and he urged them not to be intimidated by either the District Council Chairmanor the MP, in making their inputs.
“This is not about conflict but to look at the document carefully and make a critical judgment,” he said.
Kanneh said the EPA was never anti development but only stood for the rights of both landowners and investors.
Edmond Sengbeh Konneh, the head of the landowners committee in the Makpele chiefdom, told Politico that they were contented with the land deal. With the arrival of Natural Habitat, he said, they could now boast of paying school fees for their children without taken debts.
“The presence of the company in our chiefdom has created a very good impact in our lives,” he said in an interview.
Konneh recalled that when the company seized operations for two months last year it was like hell for them because all their income avenues were blocked.
All efforts to reach Natural Habitat proved futile.
(C) Politico 04/05/16
