NACE Coordinator, Cecilia Mattia
By Bampia James Bundu
National Advocacy Coalition on Extractives, NACE, has brought civil society organisations from across Sierra Leone to scrutinise the Sierra Leone Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (SLEITI) Bill at the Hill Valley Hotel in Freetown.
NACE National Coordinator, Cecilia Mattia, said that with support from Christian Aid they were holding the consultative meeting to give CSOs the opportunity to "effectively and adequately" examine the bill that would soon be tabled before parliament for deliberations.
She said a multi stakeholders’ group (MSG) that was inaugurated by the government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah had embarked on a similar engagement across the country but that such efforts were not enough because the stakeholders were left out and their voices and comments were not incorporated into the bill.
“This consultation will give CSOs the chance to effectively scrutinise the bill and come up with recommendations to be put into the final document”, she said, adding that the country was suspended in 2013 by the board of the global watchdog in the extractives industry, EITI, because it failed to meet some of the set benchmarks.
Madam Mattia said they had done their homework properly and by the next validation process the EITI secretariat Sierra Leone would either be deleted or enlisted into the process.
She revealed that it was not mandatory for a country to have an EITI Act but countries like Nigeria and Liberia already had such laws, adding that as a country Sierra Leone could follow the best practices to have an EITI Act in place.
The transparency advocate, however, noted that comments and contributions by participants would be captured and recorded and later submitted to the MSG for further incorporation into the draft bill. She appealed to participants to take the sessions seriously as their contributions would go a long way to ensure a good SLEITI bill was promulgated.
Presenting the draft bill to participants the chairman of NACE, Dr. Mustapha Thomas, explained that the primary purpose of the SLEITI bill was to provide a legal framework to enhance transparency and accountability in relation to receipts and payments in the natural resources sector.
He revealed that the EITI process sought to improve transparency and accountability in countries dependent on revenues from oil, gas, mining and other natural resources.
“Thus the principle of EITI is to promote good and accountable governance in natural resources sector”, he said, and appealed to participants to focus on the presentation and identify areas that needed to be edited while suggesting ideas that would be for the benefit of all.
Dr Thomas described the bill as “sensitive and must be looked into seriously. Our input will go a long way to guide the MSG before submitting the bill to parliament”.
Former Member of Parliament, Joseph Kaindoh described the process as timely albeit argued that the time allocated to the process was limited for them to have adequately scrutinised the bill. He argued that the bill was not people-centred as there is need for more participation into it so that more people could make their inputs.
“We need to hold more town hall meetings, district and local council meetings to educate people more on the EITI process,” he said, adding that before now the SLEITI process only focused on oil and gas, and excluded forestry and fisheries.
He appealed to the MSG and CSOs to do more sensitisation on the draft bill so that in the end the voice of the masses would be captured.
Meanwhile, the United States of America was yesterday accepted as a ‘candidate’ country to the global transparency standard EITI. So also was Papua New Guinea. Ethiopia's "candidature" application was approved and Guatemala recognised as 'EITI compliant'.
The US joined the over 40 countries that had committed to improved transparency of government revenues from the extraction of natural resources.
As a candidate country, the US would have three years within which to implement the EITI transparency standard in full and reach EITI compliance.
By joining the EITI, the US government committed to full transparency of extractives revenues from federal lands, such as from extraction of its offshore oil. They also pledged to work together with business and civil society organisations to ensure an informed debate about how its natural resources would be managed.
(C) Politico 20/03/14
