By Lusekero Mhango
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) under Karonga Diocese has urged the media in the country to embrace extractive industry reporting in their articles amid concerns over a lack of transparency and accountability in the sector.
CCJP Field Officer Vincent Bwinga made the call on Saturday during an interface meeting that the faith based organization held with journalists from Chitipa, Karonga and Mzuzu under their project Strengthening Governance of the extractive industry through financial assistance from Oxfam.
According to Bwinga, as Malawi looks to move away from Agriculture to the extractive industry as its main economic hub, it’s vital that the media also embrace reporting mining issues to boost the sector.
He said the media has a big role to play in unearthing challenges rocking the sector in the country thereby playing their part in transparency and accountability in the extractive industry.
“As we are moving towards having the extractive industry as our main economic source it’s important that the media embrace it too through story writing because right now there are many challenges that can be exposed only through the media,” he said.
Bwinga added unless the media exposes weaknesses that are hindering the sector’s development communities will continue to be taken advantage of by companies and individuals who will continue to enrich their pockets.
Concurring with Bwinga, Karonga District Information Officer (DIO) Andrew Nkonda, has challenged fellow journalists to broaden up their horizon in their news gathering and embrace extractive industry reporting.
“We the media tend to gather news in areas that we think news is easier to find like politics and ignore other areas like the extractive industry where there are a lot of stories too that need be telling hence let’s all embrace this sector,” he articulated.
