By Joseph Lamin Kamara
At their ninth annual general meeting in Freetown on last week the newly-elected chairperson of National Advocacy Coalition on Extractives (NACE), has urged government to be transparent and accountable in its governance of the country’s natural and mineral resources.
Valnora Edwin, who also heads the civil society group Campaign for Good Governance, said government needed to be transparent in its awarding of contracts on natural resources, and include local communities in the mining of the extractives, especially communities in which the resources were being mined.
“Recently, there have been problems between mining companies and local communities over land where mining was being done,” she said, adding that they wanted communities to benefit directly from mining in their areas, and government to make judicious use of proceeds obtained from the mining sector.
She urged government to prioritise education because the country was “challenged” on realising the safeguards of the government’s local content policy due to the country’s educational system that “does not cater for the job market.” She stated that entrepreneurial skills in the country “are largely weak, and standards are generally low so we lose out in the opportunities” provided by the policy.
Edwin noted that the Ebola outbreak in the country had affected “everything”, but it would not remain forever therefore “government needs to make plans for post-Ebola intervention because the outbreak has had huge impacts on the country’s health sector, food, security, economy and children.”
She said her being chairperson of the coalition on extractives involved a lot of responsibilities, “but I am heading a very vibrant civil society organisation, which is an added advantage,” she said.
She said her new NACE team was planning to engage Members of Parliament, ministries of mineral resources, forestry and food security, and fisheries and marine resources on exportation of natural resources especially when products like iron ore were challenged with fall in prices in the world market.
The outgoing chairperson of NACE Dr Mustapha Thomas said his administration had succeeded in campaigning for increased civil society representation on the Multi Stakeholders Group of the Sierra Leone Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (SLEITI) from three in 2006 to five in 2011, and “we initiated and succeeded in negotiating the relocation of the SLEITI secretariat from State House to a more secure location in the heart of Freetown.”
Dr Thomas said his administration had played an active role in the Minerals Advisory Board that “has recommended the cancellation of 115 licenses of noncompliant companies.” He however noted that they had been challenged because “we have witnessed calls from at least two of our donor partners for the current [NACE] model to be reviewed. The model came under scrutiny when member organisations failed to own up to their responsibility of providing institutional support to the secretariat.”
He said his administration had also witnessed the emergence of coalitions with membership drawn from within NACE itself, which “is against the spirit in which the coalition was founded and seems to undermine the effectiveness of our programmes.”
© Politico 02/12/14
