Give us accountability - Oil and gas CSOs tell government

Europa

November 20, 2015 3:25 PM

According to them, ensuring transparency alone does not in itself lead to proper and effective use of the oil revenues.

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Over 20 Civil society organizations across the country have come to a conclusion at the end of a day’s conference in Accra that government since the discovery and production of oil have facilitated the provision of transparency initiatives in the petroleum sector but has done little to be accountability to the citizenry.

Speaking at the conference organized by the Integrated Social Development center ISODEC, the campaign coordinator of ISODEC, Dr. Steve Asare Manteaw noted that, “over the years, we have been given transparency; PIAC has been publishing reports, the Bank of Ghana has been publishing reports, the Finance ministry has also been publishing reports all on how Ghana is doing with its oil revenues, but has these things culminated into the sort of change we wanted to see with the coming on stream of the oil? We haven’t been able to make that critical transition from transparency to accountability”.

He queried “five years into commercial oil production, has the fear expressed in 2007, the anxiety and the aspirations been fulfilled?

Dr. Manteaw urged all Civil Society Organizations in the oil and gas industry to use the already published reports to demand accountability from duty bearers because according to him “we didn’t demand for the reports just to have reports but to use them to cause the change we wish to see in our country”.

“The reports itself do not bring change in society. It’s how we use the information in those reports to demand accountability that matters," he admonished.

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