2023-12-20 17:53:06
It’s been more than 48 hours since Guinea’s main oil depot was reduced to ashes. The president of the transition, Colonel Mamadou Doumbouya, still remains in deafening silence. The Forum of Social Forces of Guinea asks him to break his silence.
18 dead, more than 200 injured and nearly 750 households affected, this is the still provisional assessment of the explosion at the Coronthie oil depot on the night of December 18. Without affecting material damage. Since then, the government, led by the Prime Minister, has tried to reassure victims and other citizens of the Republic who are in the dark. Authorities are beginning to ease the drastic measures taken at dawn of the fire, including the closure of gas stations. But there are some who are still not completely reassured. Among them, the Forum of Social Forces of Guinea, FFSG. This platform, which brings together civil society and trade union organizations, expects more from the authorities. The FFSG wants in particular an address to the nation from the President of the Transition: “Faced with the scale of the tragedy and the doubts which arise around the origin of the fire, the President of the Transition must immediately address to the nation, in order to reassure the desire to situate responsibilities and respect the various commitments including the return to constitutional order before December 31, 2024. An exit from Mamadi Doumbouya could, according to the FFSG, dispel doubts, particularly regarding the crazy rumors circulating around the origin of the fire.
Immediately after the tragedy, the authorities began by closing schools and gas stations. Gasoline stores have particularly reopened only for the sale of diesel. The Forum of Social Forces asks them to involve multinationals operating in Guinea to avoid a total shutdown of activities in the country: “In order to avoid speculation in the management of the stock of fuel available across the country and to reduce the effects of a possible fuel shortage, we must ask multinationals and other large consumers for their contribution to national solidarity by supplying fuel through their possible consumption reserves. It is also necessary to open service stations for the sale of available stocks at the official price, while setting the quantity of liters to be served at the pump to consumers per day and by category.
To elucidate this matter, an investigation is opened by the general prosecutor’s office at the Court of Appeal of Conakry for, among other things, arson, while the government spokesperson has already ruled out criminal charges. The FFSG invites the State to be more serious in the legal procedure “through a national and, if necessary, international or mixed investigation, into the origin of this tragedy, the criminal trail of which must be explored as a priority, in view of the doubts which establish themselves, rightly or wrongly, in exchanges between Guineans.
The platform also calls for the “immediate lifting of the restriction on the media and social networks” to “liberate the population from the terror of rumors and allow the effectiveness of solidarity through objective communication and the responsible circulation of information”.
This last recommendation risks falling on the wrong ears. The transitional authorities have already decided to divest the volunteers who helped the victims at the Grand Faisal Mosque. As for restrictions, they don’t even pay attention to them.
Yacine Diallo
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