Workshop organised at NASPW by the Ministry of Public Works, 2020

Monday January 20, 2020, it was held at the National Advanced School of Public Works (NASPW) of Yaounde, a workshop to assess the level of implementation of the 2018 and 2019 maintenance programs for municipal roads with funding from road fund chaired by the Minister of Public Works His Excellency Emmanuel NGANOU DJOUMESSI. A workshop attended by the Director of the NASPW Pr. NKENG George ELAMBO, the Deputy Director of the NASPW Dr. BWEMBA Charles, the Head of the Financial Affairs Department Mr. POUTOUONCHI ABDOU Karim, members of the administrative staff, and students.

It was a question during these works, of edifying the Mayors on the new responsibilities which fall to them on one hand; and on the other hand, to arrive jointly with them at the final choice of the municipal roads to be taken into account in the 2020 program.

During the discussions, attention was focused on the roads that can serve several Communes within the same Department, within the framework of intercommunality, and those of agricultural production basins.

The objective is to constitute more consistent batches that can arouse the interest of companies with good technical and financial capacity. At the end of the consultations with the Mayors, nineteen (19) Communes were selected for the procurement of maintenance contracts for the communal roads, within the framework of the intercommunality, which effectively took into account sixty-eight (68) Communes on a linear of 1,771.20 km for an amount of 7.89 billion CFA francs representing approximately 13.5% of the annual allocation from the Road Fund for the 2018 financial year.

Aware of the density of the municipal network, pleas were launched and led to an increase in the ceiling for interventions on the said network, which is approximately 100,000 km long and on which the greatest number of needs are recorded; thus going from 8.1 billion CFA francs to 15 billion.

Thus, the 2019 program has favored works of art with a view to ensuring the sustainability of interventions. For this campaign, eighty-six (86) Communes across the ten (10) Regions were selected on the basis of the use of Communal Development Plans (CDP). The total length of municipal roads to be maintained for this phase is 1,519.06 km for an amount of nine billion six hundred million (9.6 billion) CFA francs. As for the structures, their linear is approximately 1,036.60 ml in the amount of 5.4 billion CFA francs.

In addition, beyond these two programs, the Minister of Public Works, in application of the directives issued from the session of November 21, 2017, of the National Council for Decentralization, proceeded to the transfer of competences in the area of road cantonment to the Communes. This transfer represented for the year 2018, a global allocation of 2.80 billion CFA francs, allocated to 135 Communes crossed by the paved roads, for a linear of 4,039.69 km.

The leaders of the central and deconcentrated services of the MPW and the mayors were involved in this work, with whom it was a question of establishing a real symbiosis in order to succeed in overcoming the difficulties for improving the level of service of the Communal Routes.

At the end of the opening of the works, the Minister of Public Works His Excellency Mr. Emmanuel NGANOU DJOUMESSI said he was satisfied with the good understanding that the Mayors have of their role as Delegated Contracting Authority in the maintenance of Communal Roads.