By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Residents of Tankoro chiefdom in Koidu, Kono district have challenged OCTEA Koidu Limited over “the dumping of ball stones and heavy boulders about 25 metres away from dwelling houses” at Bayoh Street.
They vowed not to leave their homes at the next blasting exercise and warned that if the company did not stop depositing their “mining waste materials” they were likely to be “exposed to danger”.
One of the affected family heads, Fengai Lebbie, said he had about 25 people with him, and pointed at one of the boulders he alleged had rolled down from the dump site to the veranda of his dwelling house.
“It almost killed one of my daughters on that day,” he told Politico, adding that their children were in danger of being hit by some of those stones rolling down from the peak of some artificial stone mountains created by OCTEA.
He claimed that the distance from his house to the dump site was about 30 metres, adding that the height of the mountains over his house was over 150 metres high.
He alleged that they had lodged several complaints with the Community Development Officer of the company, Henry Vegg, about the possible dangers they were being exposed to but his response was that the houses were located in their mining concession area.
Councillor Kai Lawrence Mbayo of Ward 63 responsible for the area had also confirmed to Politico that “the Community Development Officer, who is a Ghanaian, did make the statement when I met him.” The councillor also alleged that sometime last month when they engaged Vegg on how they could rehabilitate a toilet that was damaged by a rolling stone the officer told them they were not responsible for any damage caused during their operations.
“If they like they can go defecate in plastic bags because we are not ready to do any rehabilitation on any structure in our mining concessions,” the councillor quoted the OCTEA official as saying.
Mbayo described the statements as “unreasonable, unfortunate, indecent and disrespectful to women in the community.”
Another affected person, Tamba Bayoh, whose toilet was destroyed, threatened to stay around in protest when next the company would embark on blasting.
He said that in 2008 the then minister of mines, Alhaji Alpha Kanu, assured them that after the community riot they gave the company five years within which all houses in the concession area would have been relocated.
He said the time (2008 -2012) had elapsed and two years on some hundreds of houses had still not been relocated and the company kept asking them out of the areas three times in a week to carry out their blasting.
Meanwhile, Vegg, the community development officer, denied all allegations against him by the councillor in particular. Addressing journalists some few metres away from the dump site, he said he was aware of the danger the dump site posed but promised that they would not continue to dump any rubble closer to the houses.
He said the affected houses would be among the first set of houses they hoped to build in early October.
Chairman of the civil society group, Campaign for Just Mining and communication officer of the newly formed advocacy organisation Affected Property Owners’ Network, Ibrahim Sahr Hammed Bockarie, blamed the government for the “mishaps” being faced by people in those communities.
(C) Politico 23/09/14
