BK attends Asia Pacific workshop in Jogjakarta, Indonesia

Bantay Kita, represented by its Board Director Ms. Tess Tabada and Communications and Research officer Marco Zaplan, attended a 2-week regional workshop organized by the Gadjah Mada University and Natural Resource Governance Institute last October 19-31 in Jogkarta, Indonesia.

The training course was attended by 28 participants coming from civil society organizations, government agencies, and private sector from the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Timor Leste, Dominican Republic, and Tunisia.

The workshop discussed social and environmental impacts of extractive industries; revenue management; tax, royalty, and contract terms; building coalition for reforms; and expanding disclosure requirements of the EITI.

A trip to Bojonegoro Regency in East Java was also included in the itinerary for the participants to know more about subnational initiatives of the regency particularly on revenue management, people’s participation, and transparency mechanisms in the extractive industries. The said regency is host to one of Indonesia’s biggest oil and gas discoveries.

Session speakers were Dr. Poppy Ismalina, Dr. Henda Amidjaya, Patrick Heller of NRGI, Dr. Poppy Winanti, Prof. Purwo Santoso, Dean Antony La Vina of Ateneo de Manila University, Andrew Bauer of NRGI, Emmanuel Bria also from NRGI, Dr. Cielo Magno of Bantay Kita, Jelson Garcia of NRGI, Amalinda Savirani, and Abdul Gaffar Karim.

The Philippine delegation was also joined by Mr. Marvin Casalan of University of Antique.

​The workshop ended with the participants committing to post-training activities. Ms. Tess Tabada will conduct a research on subnational EITI while Mr. Casalan will conduct a scoping study on women’s skills in Semirara Island. Mr. Zaplan will be initiating a regional online knowledge portal.