By Septimus Senessie in Kono
A group of young Danish volunteers called Operation Days Work (ODW) have described the mining and extractive laws of Sierra Leone as being friendlier to investors than to the people who own the land and the minerals. The team leader of the volunteers who are based in Kono under the aegis of the Danish NGO, IBIS, said they had a project for the youth of Kono and were on the ground to appraise themselves with the major problems facing young people in the district and to understand why they had been prone to violence. Sarah Lund Anders revealed that in all of their two visits to the district, the first being in December last year in the wake of the industrial action between the mine workers of OCTEA Koidu Limited, they had found out that “the mining laws of the country do not favor the rights of land owners and the community people in general.” Sarah furthered that with the youth being directly affected either through marginalization in their workplaces at the mine or by denying them their rights over their lands accounted for their being too prone to violence against the mining companies and their political leaders. She told Politico that the one percent tax levied on mining companies as provided for by law was “marginalizing the people and will not contribute to the development of mining companies when you consider the annual proceeds from [these] mining companies.” Asked how they hoped to help address the issue she said that in August this year all their findings on the Kono youth would be displayed to all of the high school students in Denmark with the aim of motivating “our own youth to help alleviate the suffering of their colleague youth in Kono district”. Sarah went on that following the motivational campaigns among their colleagues they would embark on “a day nationwide bobby jobs known in Denmark as Operation Days Work (ODP).” Money raised from the exercise, she went on, would be put together and sent back to Kono district through IBIS, to educate and sensitize the youth of Kono on their “basic and fundamental rights and how to approach those issues constructively without resorting to violence and the loss of life”. The project secretary for ODP, Signe Pedersen said that similar projects had been carried out in countries like Zimbabwe, Myanmar (Burma), Peru and Iraq, adding that the impact of those projects on the youths in those countries was “remarkable”. The group ended their five days of intensive site visits to mining communities with a drama which showcased to the general public the way government imposed mining companies on the mining communities with little or no benefit to them.
