By DOH JAMES SONKEY
The second session of the Steering Committee Project for the Formulation of a National Urban Policy met last May 7, 2019 in the conference hall of the Emergence Building in Yaounde under the chairmanship of its President, Minister Celestine Ketcha Courtes of Housing and Urban Development to produce the final report, validate the project which is expected to give a facelift to Cameroon cities.
Addressing members, Minister Celestine Ketcha Courtes said the second session is aimed at ameliorating multi-institutional coordination, coproduction and an inclusive management of occupation process and the valorization of lands in human establishments, notably urban spaces in order to ensure a better urbanization that will be beneficial to the highest number of the population and guarantee sustainability.
Under the consultancy of UN Habitat’s representative, participants prepared and submitted a report for work to start, mobilized and engaged public actors, private and civil society organizations in the process of development of the policy, realized a rapid diagnosis on town planning and sustainable urban development in Cameroon, produced a provisional report on the state of multi-institutional coordination of the urbanization process, formulated national urban policy while taking into consideration urban-rural interaction and supported the approbation and vulgarization process of the National Urbanization Policy.
In a chat with reporters, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Celestine Ketcha Courtes explained that “Cameroonians should have confidence in the sustainable development policy which the Head of State, H.E President Paul Biya instructed us to carry out in the country. As you all know, sustainable development must observe certain criteria and that is why it was important for us to move towards a national urbanization policy to accompany us in the organization of town planning. We met today after carrying out a tour in the ten regions to gather contributions from development stakeholders so that we move towards an inclusive national policy to address this question of development that takes into account the characteristics of the ten regions. We have come to the end of this Steering Committee and I am satisfied that all concerned ministries played important roles in this transversal document that will be sent to Parliament for scrutiny and adoption. We also set up a Committee to read over the report to make sure that the final document is in conformity with our local realities and needs.”