Inhabitants are voicing anguish over the bad state of roads in Bamenda, the country’s fourth largest city, which is now replete with potholes and gullies.

Five years since the last major works, the city’s roads have broken down to a point where traffic frequently stalls and most street corners have become “death traps”.

Commuting from one end of town to the other has become a nightmare, city dwellers say, interviewed over the course of the last week.

“Getting things done at the right time is practically impossible here because of traffic partly caused by bad roads,” says Journalist Azeh Innocent.

Tarred sections of the city’s streets are peeling off and no one is paying attention to dusty and muddy roads leading to the city’s ever expanding suburbs.

“It takes a lot of stress to ply the city of Bamenda,” complains John Tarla, a taxi driver. “At times we even go as far as violating driving rules, which is very risky, in a bid to escape some of these potholes.”

“What we have here in Bamenda as roads are death traps,” says a motorcycle rider called Cosmos. “You cannot even say whether the are earth or tarred roads.”

The city council repairs roads every year, but it hardly takes a month or so for potholes to resurface. Inhabitants blame rogue engineers, who are suspected of pocketing large sums of taxpayers money and deliver a bad job.

City Council officials admit the problem is urgent.

Vincent Nji Ndumu, the Government Delegate to the Bamenda city council has in several media outings stated that the entire road system in Bamenda needs total reconstruction.

He is quoted to have said that the road has outlived its time and only total reconstruction can help matters.

Five years ago, Bamenda was given a face lift in terms of road maintenance when the Head of state Paul Biya was coming to preside over a military parade to mark the 50th anniversary of Cameroons armed forces. But it brought only short-lived relief to the city.