By DOH JAMES SONKEY
Public Works Minister, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi has tasked his staff and other stakeholders in the domain to do all their best to help the government in controlling costs of road construction, rehabilitation and maintenance in Cameroon.
He gave the task to his central and external collaborators last January 21 and 22, 2019 at the National Advanced School of Public Works, Yaounde during the annual conference of central and devolved services of the Ministry of public Works and at the Yaounde Conference Centre during the official New Year wishes presentation ceremony to Minister Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi and Secretary of State to the Minister of Public Works in charge of Roads, Armand Ndjodom.
Public Works SG
The annual conference which opening witnessed the presence of Ministers Alamine Ousmane Mey of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Georges Elanga Obam of Decentralization and Local Development, Ibrahim Talba Malla of Public Contracts and Celestine Ketcha Courtes of Housing and Urban Development was marked by brainstorming on approaches to cost control, challenges and prospects of transferring road maintenance competences to decentralized local authorities and new paradigms and innovations in road maintenance.
In his orientation speech, Public Works Minister, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi disclosed that Cameroon’s national road network now stands at 123000km made up of 6500km of tarred road, 23000km of national and regional roads and close to 100 000km council roads.
Stressing that the Growth and Employment Strategic Paper has made their ministry a major player in the strive for emergence by 2035, the Public Works boss said FCFA 15 billion has this year been allocated to council roads against FCFA 8.1 billion in past years and that he had written to all the 360 councils in the country to forward their Councils Development Plan to the ministry for consideration in 2019 given that Mayors are now Project Owners of council roads.
In a chat with reporters, the Minister explained that in efforts to maintain the country’s road network at acceptable level, they resolved to bring in innovative solutions by stabilizing earth roads and looking for tar substitutes.
Minister Nganou Djoumessi congratulated his collaborators for the new dynamism being put in place thanks to the introduction of results based approach and called on his staff especial regional, divisional and sub divisional heads to be proactive in proposing solutions to danger zones where the road is threatening to collapse.
He promised to reinforce the role of the Ministry of Public Works in 2019 as the lone state engineer.