.Malupenga
By JUDITH NAMUTOWE –
THE Zambia Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (ZEITI) should
be timely releasing annual reports instead of the current three-year
lag.
North-western Province Permanent Secretary Amos Malupenga said the
ZEITI should consider updating its annual reports timely to ensure the
documents were relevant.
He said there was need for EITI to make the report current as
the current report, for instance, which covers 2011 activities was
irrelevant in 2014.
“Timeliness in releasing these annual reports was very important,
hence the need for the report to come in good time. As it is we are
three years behind, so the earlier we update these reports, the better,” Mr Malupenga said.
He was also hopeful that as EITI prepared the report, the secretariat
would make necessary recommendations to Government on what
improvements needed to be made.
Mr Malupenga challenged the EITI secretariat to sensitise the
people about the initiative as there was little knowledge about
EITI.
“That is the more reason people make a lot of noise from a point of
ignorance. Sometimes ignorance is very dangerous, so it’s better to let
the public know about your existence and the role that you play,” he said.
Mr Malupenga said there was a lot of interest from the major
stakeholders and the people in the province who felt that they were
the biggest stakeholder and would want to know everything about the
resource coming from the mines.
He said the citizens demanded a lot of information, especifically on how much was
being paid to the Government.
“Knowing that you are the people that gather this information, you
could be between investors and stakeholders providing information,” he said.
And ZEITI project administrative officer Kaonga Mazaba said the
initiative wanted to promote transparency in the mining sector.
Mr Mazaba said, this was because of the discrepancies in reports on how
much the Government was receiving from the mines and what was being
remitted by the mines.
“People being the major stakeholders in the resources want to know
what is coming out of the mines,” he said.
