Civil society groups monitoring extractive industries finetune action plan.

The roadmap is meant to organise and work in synergy to accomplish the task of effectively monitoring activities in the extractive industries sector for the benefit of all Cameroonians.

The action plan was unveiled during a general assembly meeting that held at the Ecumenical Service for Peace main hall in Yaounde on April 25. The meeting was used to review activities for the previous year.

The head one of the Civil Society Organisations, Dr Njume Livinus Esambe, told journalists that so far, their efforts to improve civil society representation in the management of extractive activities in the country has not yielded expected results.

This, he added, is just as their drive to expand the base of representation of civil society groups in the national pilot committee for extractive industries has been a fiasco.

The CSOs actors said they plan to press on the national pilot committee the need for some representatives in the national pilot committee to be rotatory, so that over time, more and more professional groups would have taken part in the monitoring process, for the overall benefit of all citizens.

They agreed that representatives of faith-based groups, be they Catholics, Presbyterians, Pentecostals or Muslims, could be permanent. 

But membership of other groups in the national pilot committee, they added, should not be permanent, because a civil society organisation that is operating today, could go into extinction tomorrow. This, they added, is similar to corporate organisations that are involved in extraction that will not keep extracting one type of mineral forever.

Renewing Executive Committee

Much time was expended on taking decisions that would give the association competent members in the coming executive so that they work to improve the gains expected of them by Cameroonians.

Dr Njume lamented that as at the end of 2023, the impact of their collected engagement was estimated at barely 30%. They intend to make sure that by 2025, the incoming executive would have raised this to not less than 60%.

They revealed that there were not less than 67 enterprises involved in extractive activities in the country. Altogether, these companies spend not less than 1,000 billion FCFA in the payment of salaries. 

How to expand the basket so that such funds are enjoyed by all Cameroonians is what they intend to work towards as a new executive takes power.

“Extractive activities are supposed to be carried out in such a way that present and future generations of Cameroonians continue to benefit from their national resources,” Dr Njume posited.

Adding that the objective of civil society groups in the coming years is to make sure that they are more influential, more informed, more connected and better heard both at home and abroad, which at present, they cannot claim to be.

Members deplored the derision and contempt that the government treats civil society groups, which calls for them to stay focused if they must overcome the challenges facing them.

They looked into their statutes and highlighted the requirements that aspirants to positions of leadership in the executive are supposed to fulfill in order to qualify for office.