January 18, 2021
By Mohamed M. Sesay
7.5 Billion Leones has been doled out to mining companies, according to the Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources. This is done collaboration with National Mineral Agency. The money has been to respective Chiefdom Paramount Chiefs and local councils as pre-sets for developments.
Minister Kabba made this disclosure at a press briefing held at the Ministry of Information and Communications’ conference hall.
He said in the past such funds were paid in checks into an individual account on behalf of the communities which led to misappropriation.
He added that as part of President Bio’s vision in promoting transparency and accountability, the system has been changed to ensure a more transparent and accountable means of utilizing funds based on local development plans.
Signatories to such accounts have been diversified to make it difficult for few people to connive and embezzle, the Minister told journalists.
Government has retained about 0.5% of the total monies that have disbursed via the Paramount Chiefs. This was a caveat came from the House of Parliament to ensure monitoring of the utilization of the allotted money.
It has been disclosed that the Diamond Mining Development Funds would now be closely monitored by the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources, the National Minerals Agency, the Ministry of Local Government, members of the parliamentary committee on mines and other stakeholders including civil society organizations.
The New Direction Manifesto which indicates that the mineral sectors should allocate percentages of revenue from the mining sector to education, health and general development of communities, is committed to that promise.
“We are aspiring for nothing less than 2.5% as contribution towards community development programmes as opposed to the 0.1% in the 2009 Mines and Minerals Act.”
The Minister cautioned that communities should not just be seen constructing water wells and toilets but in invest in other innovative areas that empower people.
In his presentation, the Director General of the National Minerals Agency Julius Daniel Mattai also briefed journalists on the Geophysical survey that was conducted sometimes in 2019 indicating that they used two censuses during the survey, one for magnetics in order to capture areas where there were magnetics anomalies, and radiometric based on radioactive response from mineral resources.
He added that the data collected is fully quality assured and quality controlled and that data has been kept safely.
Julius Mattai also noted that the data is extremely important for infrastructural and agricultural development in the country.
He stressed the importance of the data collected not only for academic purposes, but useful for NGOs and development partners.
