Nkeze Mbonwoh
20 March 2008
Experts are afield in the South West Province to evaluate past poverty reduction efforts.
The persistent poor road network in the South West Province has been blamed as the major shortcoming of the first generation poverty reduction strategy (PRSP) conducted between 2003 - 2007. Delegates to the provincial launching of a two-week participatory consultations to elaborate the second generation of PRSP, met in Buea 11 March.
Unanimously, participants who came from public administration, NGOs, political and social circles; suggested that roads be the priority of priorities in the new PRSP so that people can easily evacuate their produce and remain where they are to develop themselves.
Addressing the Buea PRSP meeting, Tsanga Foe Jean-Paul, Economic Adviser to the South West Governor, urged the population to show hospitality to the PRSP experts who were undertaking a provincial survey-tour throughout the six administrative divisions. During the tour, experts intend to obtain from the populations of all social sectors to freely express themselves on their economic problems in view of elaborating the country's development policies.
Mr Tsanga Foe dished out an expected line of action that will guide the second generation poverty reduction strategy. Such include improved governance through greater transparency, a severer fight against corruption and stringent accountability. To him, the fore-mentioned requirements can raise investments and economic growth rates, and so reduce poverty. Conducting discussions to dissect the stubborn economic and social malaise in Cameroon, Tsanga Foe, an old broom in the administrative ambits, likened the situation to the famous "dance indançable Malienne" or "the impossible Malian dance".
The Malian legendary dance provides that any dancer who heads the line, will lose the father. Otherwise, any dancer who tails the line will lose the mother. And if for fear of both situations, any dancer who refuses to dance at all will die. In such an analogy, Tsanga Foe was painting the inertia, personal interest and the generalised morosity already condemned by the Head of State President Paul Biya in his 31st December 2007 address to the nation.
Albert Ndile, Inspector General at the Ministry of Finance, heading the PRSP delegation in the field, demanded openness and frankness from all stakeholders of development so that their second exercise in the poverty reduction strategy can yield the desired fruits. Mr Ndile told Cameroon Tribune that after the 2000 and 2003 consultations that led to the putting in place of the last poverty reduction programme, it was foreseen that another consultation will come in 2008 to evaluate its impact.
Educational authorities of the South West told experts of the PRSP that a difference must be struck between schooling and education so that mentalities could be changed to preserve what the State has already acquired in terms of development. A negative reference was being made to the burning of badly-needed roads and the convulsive destruction of hard-earned public and private properties. Authorities of the agricultural sector of the South West sent out signals of a declining production of foodcrops owing to the unsustained liberalisation that has killed protective cooperatives given way to laxed CIGs (Common Initiative Groups). They held that where it is impossible to have tarred roads, earth roads should be maintained rather than abandoning them to dilapidation.
As an advise to the next phase of the poverty reduction, the Buea meeting expressed the need for close tracking of all development activities at local levels. They deplored the cumbersome stages required to operate a business in Cameroon recalling a recent study showing some 82 stages to brave before obtaining a business licence. They bewailed that applicants have to wait in some of the stages for as long as six months. This was food-for-thought for the experts plying the field in view of setting up a new strategy for poverty reduction.
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