A cross section of Ghanaians, including the chief of the Secondi Traditional Council, Nana Yadae Kojo IV, lawyers from the private sector and the Attorney General’s Department, some members of academia and officials of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) will this month attend a seminar in Calgary, Canada on oil conflict resolution.
The seminar will be jointly organised by the Pulse Institute of Canada and the Gamey and Gamey Academy of Mediation in Ghana, from May 18 to 23, 2008.
The seminar comes at the heels of the commercial discoveries of oil in the country and the expectations of the country benefiting in the next two or three years.
Pulse Institute, uses dialogue or conversations in all endeavours for people to understand and reach consensus to achieve their targets, while GGAM is a mediation agency in the country.
The Chief Executive Officer of GAMM and a labour consultant, Mr Austin Gamey, told the Daily Graphic in Accra that the seminar was to prepare adequately for the country’s good fortune in finding oil.
Mr Gamey with Dr Nancy Love, the Founder and President of Pulse Institute and a renowned mediator, are the main resource persons for the seminar.
He said since the discoveries of oil in the country, much had been done and said, and commended the government for the national and regional fora that had been organised in expectation of the economic opportunities of oil discoveries in the country.
“However, I am not sure that whatever has come out of these fora so far has been documented for us to read and learn viable lessons to prevent us from slipping into the same mistakes as countries like Angola and Nigeria, where oil has now become a contentious issue”, Mr Gamey pointed out.
He said implementing all the policies and ideas on how the country was to benefit from the oil discovery was not as important as preparing for all eventualities.
“The seminar is, therefore a disco*very, where participants will learn rigorous preventive and dispute resolution mechanisms in the petroleum, gas and environmental sectors. This is one of the major ways of getting the country prepared”, Mr Gamey said.
He added that the new paradigm that the participants would learn, would enable them prevent conflict through a frame of mediation known as “conversations” and developed by the Pulse Institute.
Once participants have been coached, they could frame and re-frame this method of conversation or dialogue to suit any environment, situation or circumstance, he explained.
DAILY GRAPHIC, MONDAY, MAY 5, 2008, PG 21
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