[allAfrica.com] [Life_Over_Debt] In the Diamonds We Trust Concord Times (Freetown) ANALYSIS March 23, 2004 Posted to the web March 23, 2004 By Osman Benk Sankoh Freetown Pot riddled streets. Dilapidated houses. No proper drinking water. No electricity. Epidemics loom. Human concentration in these areas is very high. Water filled pits remain fallow. Literally, no available land for farming or cattle to eat grass. You may not want to believe this but this is Kono, the heart of the country's diamond rendezvous. It is blessed with diamonds but alas! Diamonds are more of a curse to Kono instead of a blessing. Around the 1930s, diamonds were first extracted from this area and on to date, they are still being extracted with Kono having literally not benefited much from this God given possession. Don't take my words for this but the likes of Umaru Fofana (Unamil's Public Information Section) who evidently grew up in this area selling kerosene and walking barefooted on the minefields is in a better position to put needles or not to this assertion as he himself once described what he saw in Kono when he returned there after the war had just ended as, " apocalyptic." Like Kono, Sierra Leone has also tasted the ugly side of having diamonds much to the extent that we now have a movie from Sierrawood called " Blood Diamonds." While Europeans or Americans continue to enjoy the sparkling beauty and richness of our prized possession, the story back at home is completely different. During the war here, limbs were severed, lives were snuffed out from human beings and the mining pits themselves were turned into vast killing fields. Visit Tombodu in Kono today and what will surely not escape your eye is a mining pit which was transformed into a killing zone and thus dubbed as Savage pit. Here, it was said a Col. Savage of the now defunct AFRC made it possible for residents to have their untimely appointments with God fulfilled and having diamonds with you at the time was just another fast track mechanism to send you to the ' master' Some people are of the view that the decade old war we went through was as a result of diamonds. Whether you agree to this or believed that Foday Sankoh had always nursed his vaulting ambition to get power at all cost, the issue of diamonds still continues to be a threat to our own very existence. With the setting up of the certification and Kimberly process, one would have thought that The Gambia which has no business toying with diamonds instead of selling groundnut would not continue to be among the leading exporters of diamonds ' made in Sierra Leone.' In fact, one would have thought that Antwerp and other diamond markets would have positively impacted life particularly in our diamond fields in Tongo and Kono to name but a few. However, the country is still grappling with the inadequacies, which have left our vast diamond fields to be in an apocalyptic state, and with hungry looking children foraging on what has now been aptly dubbed as child labour and perpetrated by illegal miners, Maraka and Lebanese foreign merchants. Adding salt to Syrian wounds is the Kimberlite process which we are now effecting. Can this save us from our present quagmire? Is it a very good medication to doctor our cure or is it going to make an already worst situation nasty? Adding voice for the Kimberlite process to be revisited is Opposition leader, Ernest Koroma and other key Kono stakeholders. However, the loudest voice has come from Campaign for Just Mining, an offshoot of the National Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) who recently launched their Diamond Annual Review at the China House. Conspicuously absent at last Thursday's ceremony held at China House were government officials from the Ministries of Mineral Resources, Labour and Social Security, Lands and Environment and the Government Gold and Diamond Office (GGDO) This was however not taking kindly as speaker after speaker on the day saw this as an indictment on Government's ' insensitive' nature towards the mining policy. Chairing the occasion was acclaimed civil activist, Helen Bash-Taqi who has earned a reputation for calling things by their proper names. For her, history was being made in what she described as, " to venture into an area long perceived by most of us all as the sole domain of the government." Helen however revealed that the successes they have gained was without cost as some of them have been harassed, branded as anti-government and even subjected to injustice, unlawful detention and unfair trials. But what is the importance of the review? According Abu Brima, NMJD's National Coordinator, this is seen as a means of building greater public awareness of the diamond industry in the country, " of engaging civil society and government in development oriented policy discussions and of ensuring that Sierra Leone is able to meet its obligations for compliance with the Kimberly Process diamond certification scheme." Issues that were tackled in the Review include; the miners, dealers and exporters, child labour, the environment, the issue of governance, the Kimberly process and Beneficiation. Unskilled labour and illicit is the order of the day for most miners who are described as, ' unregistered, and collectively, they are unregulated," in the Review. It also revealed that most of the dealers are non-Sierra Leoneans, (no thanks to the diamond exports of The Gambia," and the Mines Ministry headed by Alhaji Mohamed Swaray Deen was seen as having attracted the disdain of foreign donors though he himself, " has developed a reputation for probity." According to the Review, " in spite of widespread visible evidence of the phenomenon, Government's attitude towards the problem of child miners have been, until recently, one of denial." Alluvial mining was also considered as a threat as, " huge pits are left exposed, streams and rivers are muddied and polluted, rocks are sometimes blasted by dynamite and large tracts of land are cleared and left barren." The corruption of mines officials was also identified as an anathema Though our Kimberly Process Certification Scheme has been lauded in most quarters it was however not with blemish as the report further indicates that it does not meet all the minimum standards of the Kimberly process and, " perhaps, the most glaring deficiency is the lack of a veritable audit trail from the diamond mines to the market." Whether you like it or it, diamonds have the potency to spark up major conflicts and as Abu Brima said, it represents a ' watching brief' on the country's diamond industry. One good thing about the Review is that it does not only criticize for the sake of it, it also proffer solutions on how not to make diamonds our woes. Frankly speaking, it was done in good faith and what is now left is for all the major stakeholders to go back to the drawing board, use the Review as a road map to create and drum up a good ' walking' path for our diamond fields.   ==============================================================================  Copyright © 2004 Concord Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). ==============================================================================