Despite several bureaus created to monitor roadwork, the quality largely remains undesirable.

Competitive bidding for road and other civil works has been the norm in Cameroon. The tender system is supposedly adopted to curb high costs, low work quality and excessive monopoly of suppliers of construction materials and services. In this regard, the institution given out the contract prepares a tender file, which is closely scrutinized by a certified technician. Depending on the amount of money at stake, the file may be transmitted to the public contract regulatory agency (ARMP) for approval which permits the tenders board to validate the file, which is then published in the media for contractors to apply. Once the application files are received, a sub commission is created to open and analyse the bids in order to determine the most qualified bidder.

After its analyses, the sub commission forwards the final report to the tender board, proposing the names of candidate most suitable for the job. And, once the commission's proposition is approved, the board awards and publishes the results of the tender. The contractor is then expected to forward the draft jobbing order, which is further re-examined by the board in order get the final contract document signed. That done, a service order is then issued by project owner, authorizing work to begin.

In due course, the project owner is expected to co-opt an independent quality control consultant who steps in to ensure the quality of the project by deploying regular control missions at the jobsite. Once the project is completed, a technician makes a pre-reception visit to the site, where he either approves or disapproves the final reception. Even so, only about 90 per cent of the total sum is expected to be disbursed to the contractor. The remaining 10 per cent is, by rule, due after one year-time the project owner uses to scrutinize and confirm the quality of the job.

The above mentioned procedures are however mere formalities aesthetically engraved on paper. Some unscrupulous private contractors and accomplices in the Ministry of Public Works and several other public institutions have experimented new ways of acquiring new businesses and enhancing abnormal profit. Often, they manipulate in the areas of risks and incentives through what they usually term "unforeseen technical obstacles", which often result from poor planning, poor budgeting, and poor resource management. On the owner's side, the push to minimize costs is often an absolute goal, regardless of market realities, resulting in impossibly low prices being accepted as part of the bids which give owners all the rights and contractors all the obligations. Such contracts are either haphazardly executed or simply abandoned when the demands of the witty contractor are not met.