Officials of China First Highway Engineering Company, FCHEC who are in charge of construction work on the Yaounde-Douala Highway have grumbled that they’re unable to complete Phase I of the dual carriage highway on time because of too many administrative and technical bottlenecks they have to go through all the time.

Revealing that 38.5 percent of the execution time frame has already elapsed while only 22% work has been executed, Director General, Du Siyong and Chief Engineer of the project, Lui Chengkun, nit-picked the Minister of Public Works, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi and his collaborators, to the effect that they will keep on halting work on the project site if unnecessary drawn-out administrative procedures and decisions of some stakeholders in the project are not reviewed.

They made the petition to Public Works Minister during his working visit to the project base in Lobo, Lekie division, Center region, April 26.

Deliberations at the meeting were characterized by accusations and counter accusations between FCHEC officials, a local quality control team, Tunisian SET Tunis and Louis Berger, the ministry of public contracts, the government-owned civil engineering laboratory, LABOGENIE, with each of them denying to accept responsibility to the setbacks already witnessed in the construction of the highway.

Deliberations got so heated that Djoumessi, Transport Minister, was forced time and again to call the officials to order, stressing that the aim of the meeting was not to punish anyone, but to instill in them a spirit of collaboration and facilitation for the project to move forward.

However, the Chinese were apt to clarify that they have to raise their concerns because if the road is poorly constructed, they did be the ones to be blamed at the end of the day. The bureaucratic red tapes holding down progress on the project, they said include Tunisian’s lateness to work and very lengthy procedures in treatment of files. They files, they said, have to move from the company through so many other institutions and follow the same channel to get back to the company.

“Each time we are waiting for feedback from any institution, we have to stop work”, said Lui Chengkun, the Chinese director, with the help of a Chinese translator.

After listening and watching all the stakeholders play the blame game and justify their actions, Djoumessi concluded that “there is lack of synergy in the execution of this project.”

He took time to reiterate the reason for his visit. Besides solving such conflicts between the stakeholders, the minster sort to know whether citizens affected by the construction of the road have been paid indemnities.

The SDOs of Lekie and Nyong and Kelle divisions as well as the mayor of Lobo reassured the minister that everything is under control. They said some villagers are ready to evacuate construction sites once payment of indemnities and compensation for destruction of graves of their deceased loved ones has been made.

Solutions were proposed for all the problems raised during the working session. We gathered that the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Public Works will henceforth be paying a fortnightly visit to the project site to ensure that everything is progressing as agreed.

The Chinese were awarded the contract to construct the first 100km of the Yaounde-Douala dual carriage highway worth $568million, circa 32 billion FCFA. The road once completed, will link national road number 3, pending Phase II of the project which will lead to Douala.