Sierra Leone held a one-day national dialogue symposium on of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPSC) enforcement last week, with participants highlighting smuggling and weak enforcement practices as major contributing factors to Freetown's inability to make the most from its huge mineral deposits, especially diamonds, All Africa reported.

Organized by the Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD), with support from Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), the result-oriented symposium aimed at capturing the participants' perceptions on key diamond industry issues, particularly smuggling and the enforcement of the terms of the KPSC.

Regional Director of NMJD Aminata Kelly-Lamin, referred to the KPSC as "a mechanism through which diamond exporters are obliged to obtain valuable certificates indicating the origin of their diamonds and destination."

She explained that the KPSC is "a joint governmental, international industry and civil society initiative that is geared towards withdrawing the flow of conflict or blood diamonds from the market and at the same time protecting the legitimate diamond industry."

Diamond smuggling, Kelly-Lamin added, represents "heartless means by certain unscrupulous persons to avoid official channels in the process of exporting diamonds… This has cost (Sierra Leone) millions of dollars over the past 50 years, with their being no end in sight to the menace till date."

Ministry of Mineral Resources and Political Affairs' Samuel Borbor Koroma, who was one of the keynote speakers in the symposium, said that although the implementation of the KPSC "was not without flaws, it has however contributed in no small way to the country's improved revenue generation from diamond exports over the past years, since the scheme was introduced in the country in 2003."

Sierra Leone, he said, "has exported well over 600,000 carats of diamonds in the past ten years, courtesy of the KPSC."

Koroma added that through the KPSC, 80% of all diamonds exported from Freetown pass through official channels and are duly certified by the Government Gold and Diamond Office (GGDO) where he operates as Diamond Valuer.

Koroma went on to state that member countries are under pressure to comply with Kimberley Process directives, and that Sierra Leone cannot afford to be left behind; bearing in mind the unprecedented lose the country recorded in the absence of the scheme, especially during the war years.