Godlove Bainkong
3 November 2009
The new departments are seeking to harmonise their activities so as to improve on the cost and quality of civil works infrastructure in the country.
It is no news that civil works infrastructure in Cameroon leave much to desire. Reports of public infrastructure deteriorating soon after contractors hand them over to government or houses either sinking or crumbling like a pack of cards inundate the media.
Analysts say the problem is not unconnected with poor feasibility studies carried out by many who pass for civil engineers, absence or weakness of institutional environment within the project areas, low levels of expertise of stakeholders, bad governance and or the oversight of stakeholders of the projects as well as inadequate finances. The geopolitical conditions of the soil are either not taken into consideration or the problem, even when diagnosed, is most often not adequately addressed. The results are that the soil and the construction material used are sometimes not compatible. The case of a storey building that collapsed in Douala, a rickety building that also collapsed in Bafoussam a few months back as well as the state of the country's roads are glaring examples of anarchy in the sector.
The Public Contracts Regulatory Agency (ARMP) and the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LABOGENIE), two giants in the country's civil infrastructure sector, acknowledged that the problem is deteriorating and risks getting worse in the advent of bigger projects and the envisaged transfer of competence within the decentralisation programme.
Against this backdrop, ARMP and LABOGENIE last week jointly organised a seminar on constructing safe and durable infrastructure at low cost. The seminar was essentially on quality control and good governance in the civil engineering sector. In a chart with CT, a seasoned Civil Engineer and Board Chairman of LABOGENIE, Shey Jones Yembe disclosed that people spend so much to build big buildings and careless on where they are putting up the structures. Sometimes, they don't worry about the quality of the material being used for their structures. He said it is common to see somebody who takes a building for FCFA 1 billion and doesn't think that he could spend FCFA 2 or 3 million just to know how good the soil was. "You find cracks on the building and at the end of the day it would cost the individual much more than he would have spent at the beginning".
These revelations are disturbing especially as they are life-threatening and costly to the State. During the last 8th General Assembly of the African Road Maintenance Funds Association that held in Yaounde recently, it was disclosed that Cameroon spends over FCFA 50 billion yearly on road maintenance. Instead of spending so much to rehabilitate badly-constructed roads, the State could use this money to develop new roads to improve on the road network in the country, most of which are seasonal, were professionalism employed in executing projects.
Presiding at the seminar, the Minister of Public Works, Bernard Messengue Avom enjoined the two departments to come up with recommendations that would help government take decisions as well as put in place a prevention and regulation process to reduce the cost and to improve the durability of infrastructure. He acknowledged that there are existing rules to assure and guarantee the quality of all works but that the rules are not yet applied. The ARMP/LABOGENIE partnership will allow for the former to do the regulation while the latter does the techniques. The collaboration would be fruitful as it could kick out quacks but what probably remains to be done is the applicability of the terms of collaboration which should not be left to beg for application like the already laid down rules on civil works.
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