TRUTH THAT MUST BE TOLD

Roads without maintenance

By Asong Ndifor

“Where a road passes, development follows”, is a maxim Cameroonian politicians have over laboured into a cliché. It shows the importance of roads, be they farm-to-market paths, paved or just earth roads. All need maintenance to be relevant in the New Deal’s race to have Cameroon “emerge” out of “under development” in the magic year of 2035.

But the state of roads remains appalling. Not to talk of the vast areas hidden in enclaves of valleys, slops and hill tops which adorn the country’s landscape or the shaggy dog sagas that go with the tarring of the Kumba-Mamfe and Bamenda Ring roads.

Even roads that exist without maintenance could quickly degrade into death traps. So how can Cameroon “emerge” out of poverty and very indebted too, if only “less than ten percent of its priority roads are maintained”?   

Jean Claude Atanga Bikoe, the administrator of the Road Fund has expressed that concern. There is not just enough money allocated for maintenance and the little allocated goes through a bottleneck of bureaucracy often getting to the Fund too late and too little.

Solution?  Bikoe believes, and I share his view, that SONARA and SCDP which collect oil production tax for road maintenance on their behalf should hands off the assignment.

Toll gate fees collected by the road receipt security programme and those at road weigh-in gates for heavy-duty vehicles also get to the Fund late and hamper its ability to maintain roads quickly.

Beyond late payment, there is also a lot of embezzlement at the toll gates and weighing stations that reduce revenue for the road Funds. If the Fund is complaining about deplorable maintenance of priority roads, then the situation in the rural area is worst as most of the earth roads are impassable in the rainy season.

Contractors in the road sectors lack equipment and even where machinery like bulldozers are available, operators are hard to find. Contractors in the sector are often those who do not execute their contracts on time, are ill-equipped and notorious for shoddy jobs.

    

There have even been reported cases where contractors in rural areas default in maintaining the length of the road or the current width. But in an environment bristling with impunity, it is not uncommon to have such jobs hurriedly paid so that the “stakeholders” can share the booty.

Money is paid for roads not well maintained or constructed and they peel off after the rains. Fake promises are made year in, year out to tar roads to a point any discourse on road development remains the subject of deep skepticism.

So corrupt is the sector that former public works minister, Ambassa Zang enter parliament to be shielded by immunity and when he discovered it was just a matter of time to be stripped of the protection, he vamoosed out of the country. While in Canada, he changed his name to Ndongo Innocent. But are the Cameroon police not a member of International Police, which can hunt for fugitives abroad?

It is because of the importance of roads to development that politicians say development follows where it passes. If there are no good roads, it means the way to emerge in 2035 is clustered with road blocks and a pipe dream. 

Postscript: When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.-Edmund Burke.