Declining Diamond Industry in Sierra Leone

The once booming diamond industry in Sierra Leone now seems to be on the decline, many diamond offices have folded up as many dealers and miners have quit the industry and without saying, the situation is negatively impacting our economy.

Many diamond dealers and miners have been complaining to us that nowadays diamonds have become very scarce and very expensive to mine due to the exhaustion of most productive mining fields by decades of continuous licit and illicit mining since 1930 when diamonds were discovered in this country.

Illicit mining, especially, climaxed during the decade-long rebel incursion when people were mining randomly with impunity causing a further exhaustion of more diamond fields. This situation necessitates the prospecting of new areas by the Department of Geological Surveys.

Government must empower this department logistically to embark on a massive nationwide prospecting exercise in order to discover new diamond-deposit areas; this may succeed in reviving the rapidly retrogressing industry for which this republic is universally known.

Although our diamond industry contributed immensely to fuelling our rebel carnage to a notoriously horrible point, the fact remains it has been a major source of our struggling economy, therefore, such an economically viable industry should not be allowed to continue deteriorating; government must act swiftly to salvage the ugly situation.

Moreover, we are patriotically obligated to remind government that the rampant smuggling and illicit mining that characterize our diamond industry have been costing this nation billions of Leones, thereby undermining our economy; so, government should try to wage a more vigorous war on diamond smuggling and illicit mining.

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