Grand Kru County Senator Numene T. H. Bartekwa has responded sharply to recent criticisms from Nimba County Senator Nya D. Twayen Jr., clarifying that the Senate Joint Committee’s trip to ArcelorMittal Liberia (AML) was carried out in good faith and in direct response to complaints originally filed by Senator Twayen himself. Senator Bartekwa, who chairs the Senate Committee on Concessions and Investment, explained during a press engagement at the Capitol Building that the joint committee’s visit to AML’s operational sites in Nimba County was triggered by issues raised by Senator Twayen regarding the company’s alleged violations of its Mineral Development Agreement (MDA).
“Our trip to Nimba to engage with ArcelorMittal was based on an official invitation from the company,” Bartekwa said. “It was done within the framework of an investigation prompted by Senator Twayen’s own complaints. We are not acting outside the Senate’s mandate.” According to Senator Bartekwa, the Senate Joint Committee was constituted following a formal communication from Senator Twayen to the Senate Plenary. In that communication, Senator Twayen outlined several grievances against ArcelorMittal, including alleged inflation of costs for its concentration plant, deplorable housing conditions inherited from the former LAMCO operation, poor health and education services, and the lack of job opportunities for Liberians—particularly those in Nimba County.
He also argued that ArcelorMittal was not fulfilling the MDA provision requiring that at least one of the company’s top three senior positions be held by a Liberian within ten years of its operations in the country. Bartekwa explained that in response to those complaints, the Senate Plenary instructed the Secretary of the Senate to formally constitute a joint committee. He said he received an official letter designating him as head of the committee, and the committee's mandate was clear: to investigate Senator Twayen’s allegations. “The Senate, in its wisdom, acted based on the merit of the complaint. We engaged the Ministry of Public Works, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and the National Bureau of Concessions, among others, for a public hearing in the Senate chamber,” Bartekwa said.
Bartekwa revealed that following those hearings, ArcelorMittal began engaging with the committee to address the concerns. He confirmed that the company submitted a written response outlining a timeline to correct the lapses raised by the Nimba Senator. “We’ve been having intense engagement with them to ensure that all the things listed for the company to do can be done,” Bartekwa said. “We will ensure that those things are addressed in the interest of the people. Our conviction is based on Senator Twayen’s own demands—not for the company to leave Liberia, but for it to comply with the MDA.”
In a surprising revelation, Senator Bartekwa disclosed that ArcelorMittal declined to allow Senator Twayen to participate in the oversight trip, citing previous confrontational encounters with him. “When we presented the names of the joint committee to the company, they told us: ‘So, we please want to ask you, let him be left out, and later when you see what we have done, then you can convince him that indeed these things are done,’” Bartekwa quoted AML officials as saying. “To make the trip peaceful, we decided to take his name off the list,” he said. However, Bartekwa expressed frustration over Senator Twayen’s reaction to the trip, particularly a Facebook post describing the mission as a "luxurious trip."
“After engaging him in Nimba and trying to address the same issues he raised, out of the blue, we saw a Facebook post that we went on a luxurious trip—which is not the reality,” Bartekwa said. “He even went and organized a large crowd to undermine our being at the company’s operations.” Despite the hostility, Senator Bartekwa thanked the people of Nimba for their restraint during the visit. “Had it not been for the people’s tolerance, they could have descended on us—they could have even beaten us—for addressing issues that Senator Twayen himself lifted,” he remarked. In a strongly worded rebuttal, Senator Nya D. Twayen Jr. publicly rejected the legitimacy of the trip and questioned the authority of the joint committee.
"I read a statement from the 'Joint Legislative Committee on MDA compliance' trying to justify their luxury trip to AML. To begin with, there are only two legislative joint committees of the Legislature: Public Accounts and Modernization (which I chair)," Twayen said in a public post. He argued that any other joint committee must be authorized by both the Senate and House leaderships, and no such authorization was given for the AML visit. He also claimed there was no record of the trip in the Senate workroom or concession committee chatroom. "I call on the leadership of both Houses to investigate this surreptitious trip to ArcelorMittal’s concession so as not to undermine the ongoing hearings at the Senate," he said.
Twayen went further, alleging that AML may have deliberately bypassed official protocols and sought to influence lawmakers for “sinister reasons,” while dodging a separate meeting called by the Inter-Ministerial Concessions Committee. “I can assure the people of Nimba that gone are the days of corporate mischiefs at the expense of our people,” he declared. “AML must correct the wrongs of the past, improve current conditions, and ensure full implementation of the MDA as stipulated—or risk being sued or denied renewal.”
Author: Zac T. Sherman
