By Kemo Cham
Chief Alfred Tuayami was a young man when his village of Gangama was relocated to make way for what is today home to one of Sierra Rutile’s two dredges.
This was in 1986, when dozens of families were uprooted from their ancestral lands with promises that they would be provided proper housing, schools, alongside social amenities like water and electricity in their new home. Thirty-two years later, what’s left of the relocated families is still waiting for the realization of those promises.
Alfred is now the head of his family and he is the chief of Lungi, one of the three communities that sprouted out of the dismantled Gangama. The other two are Junttionla and [New] Gamanga. Between the three villages they comprise a population of over 1000, according to the chief.
“They gave us chicken change. They did not build anything for us. All they gave us at the time was only enough to buy zinc, nails and cement. We had to do extra work to be able to build these houses you see,” the chief said in an interview outside his compound which stands at a popular junction that links the village to the neighboring villages and the main plant site of the company.
“We expected that life should have been far better than this...We have made so many reports for the government to ask these people to do what they promised. Nothing has happened,” he added.
Lungi and its neighboring communities are part of the Kahekay Section of the Imperi Chiefdom, which comprises eight villages. Most of the visible development projects here are donor funded, from water to schools to the only community health post.
Even while they grieve over the disappointment of unfulfilled promises, the people of Lungi and its neighboring communities are still struggling to cope with the effect of the mining activities of the company. One of this is dust pollution.
The main highway running through the village is one of the routes the company’s vehicles use on their way to and from the Gangama Wet Plant Dredge. According to Chief Tuayami, until recently the road was also used by the company’s haulage trucks, when they constructed an alternative route at the other end of the village.
But even now the villagers have to put up with dust caused by the light vehicles that use it to drop off or pick up their staff.
Because of the dust, by December, cough becomes the predominant illness in these communities. Yet the only health post, the Kahekay Maternity Community Health Post, which serves all eight villages, is hardly equipped enough to serve their needs. There is no ambulance for referral purposes. They rely on Okada [commercial motor bike] to transport the sick and even pregnant women.
Because of this many women stay away from hospital, until it is time to deliver, in the case of pregnancy, say activists. And cases of women delivering on the way are therefore a frequent occurrence, they add.
Sierra Rutile says it regularly sprays water on the streets, along the route of its haulage trucks. But the people say that’s hardly enough as with just two to three heavy vehicles plying it, it gets dried up soon.
Teenage pregnancy
The highest level of educational institution in the community is a Junior Secondary School. This means children who are above that level have to travel long distances to Mogbwemo and Moriba towns.
This has become a major source of discomfort for both students and their parents. It cost a fortune for a two-way motor bike ride, the main means of transportation in this part of Sierra Leone. Many families can’t afford to pay for their kids.
Besides the fact that they are always late for school, due to the long distance they cover walking, the children also have to deal with the issue of dust generated by vehicles plying the route.
Community leaders say this has also been a major fueling factor of one of the major societal menace in the region – teenage pregnancy. Girls whose parents can’t afford the huge transportation cost fall susceptible to bike riders, who offer free ride in exchange for casual relationships, many of which end up in unwanted pregnancies.
Little wonder that Bonthe and Moyamba accounts for some of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Sierra Leone, and it has contributed to the high school dropouts among girls in the region.
If you want to get a better picture of the level of destruction caused by mining in the Imperi Chiefdom, this part of Bonthe provides a regrettably perfect illustration. Mined-out pits are the most visible of the environmental issues. Some of them are so huge that they can be mistaken for a river.
According to Chief Tuayami, about 10 people were documented to have drowned in his community alone recently. He said the latest incident, a 12 year old boy, happened three weeks before this interview last November.
In one of the most recent incidents, six people died at one go, according to the chief. He said the victims were part of a group going to their farms.
Like elsewhere in Bonthe and Moyamba, farming is the main source of living for the majority of the people here. And cassava is the leading crop of cultivation. But they also cultivate rice and other cash crops. The people say the rice crops don’t perform well, due to what they believe is the effect of chemicals the company uses in its mining operations. Unlike rice, which is cultivated in swamps, to where the chemicals are washed during the rainy season, cassava is cultivated upland, so they do relatively better.
From a distance, it would appear to a first time visitor that Lungi is electrified, thanks to the power cables, supported by giant poles, that pass over the community. The cables carry electricity from the company’s power plant outside Moriba Town and pass through Mogbwemo. One line leads to the dredge at Lanti, the second to the Gangama dredge, and the third to Mobinbi.
Mobinbi is an isolated settlement with western style homes and recreational facilities, where executives and consultants working for the company stay. Those familiar with the place say it’s a whole world of its own. You have to have a reason to visit Mobinbi, which is guarded 24 hours. Any vehicle that passes through is checked before they are allowed in.
The community people find this provocative, said Chief Tuayami, referring to the overhead cables that pass through their village. He said they have asked the company to remove the poles from their village if they can’t supply them power.
Civil society has also called for the company to provide light for the communities or divert the cables away from them, said Sallieu Beahtao, the head of a coalition of civil society organizations that operate under the platform of the Freetown-based Network Movement for Justice and Development. He said the cables are the reason for the frequent fatal lightening incidences. He added that they have told the company to at least provide electricity to Moriba Town and Mogbwemo, which are the largest communities.
Mr Beahtao also criticized the company’s practice of shutting out non-staff members from its clinic.
“They allow only their staff to be treated, yet it is not only their staff who suffer from the sicknesses caused by their operations. They also provide all the safety gears for their workers. But what about the community people who are more (in number) than the workers?” he said.
A Sierra Rutile spokesman said the company’s policy with regards its clinic is that they provide services for their workers and their immediate families. Osman Lahai, Community Affairs Manager, said the clinic is not big enough to accommodate the entire Rutile Population.
Most contentious
Perhaps the most contentious issue between the mining communities and Sierra Rutile is its perceived reluctance to employ indigenes.
The locals believe they are favored less when it comes to employment. They say what little jobs they are given are for casual work. And they believe this is so because the company doesn’t like employing people who complain about anything.
“There are many technically fit people here: operators, drivers, carpenters. But when they announce vacancy, once you indicate you are from Imperi, your application never sees the light of the day,” said Chief Tuayami.
He believes this is also caused by the fact that almost all of the top managers with decision making powers in the company are foreign to the communities, noting that these people tend to consider their own people before they consider others when vacancies are opened.
The government’s local content policy is looked at from a broader perspective, said Augusta Nuwomah of the civil society organization WIFEE. She said Sierra Rutile has argued that it is employing Sierra Leoneans, regardless of where they come from.
“But by right, premium should be laid on the indigenes of the mining communities,” she said.
Eric Kpnabom was taking the Selective Entrance Examination (Primary School Leaving Certificate Exams) the same year that Old Gangama community was relocated.
“The place was good to be. Farming was productive. You wouldn’t want to work for anyone, not even the company, at the time. But now farming is not good,” he said, recalling his childhood days at the parent village.
Eric said while the company should be blamed for what the people are going through, most of the blame goes to the government for failing to serve its purpose of protecting the interest of its people.
Eric, who teaches at the Impere Secondary School in Moriba Town, said investors operate only based on the agreement they reach with government.
“If we see that something is disturbing us and we want to do something, the government is the one that attacks us. We have no protection. It’s not that we are happy with what’s happening to us,” he said.
Mr Beahtao agrees. He said in spite of its many excuses, Sierra Rutile is guilty for failing to fully implement the dictates of the country’s mining laws.
“In the Mining Act, we understand that you should provide at least the equivalent of what the people had before you relocated them,” he said.
The activist cited the frequent change in ownership of the company as a major source of all the problems of unfulfilled promises. Anytime a new management/owner comes, they tend not to respect what the previous one had agreed, he said. And he thinks that could have been avoided if the government had set up a standard that investors go by.
“If there was a standard they should be forced to go by it. That is why I said the government has the largest share of the blame.”
Beahtao however sounded pessimistic about the future, noting that it would be hard, if not impossible, for Sierra Rutile to fulfill all its promises given the piled up relocated communities it has to deal with.
This report was done in collaboration with the National Advocacy Coalition on Extractive and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.
© 2019 Politico Online
