The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Jean Claude Mbwentchou, has enjoined Members of Parliament to vote laws that provide huge budgets for the funding of lowcost housing in Cameroon.

He made the appeal at the National Assembly during a seminar to brief MPs on Government policy on the development of lowcost housing in Cameroon.

According to the Minister, the MPs must contribute their own quota to the policy if Cameroon must attain it objectives of constructing 10,000 lowcost houses and developing 50,000 plots by 2020.

Participants at the seminar listened to exposés by the Directors General of structures in charge of social housing in Cameroon; Credit Foncier, SIC, MAETUR and MIPROMALO.

They also listened to presentations on some lowcost housing experiences in countries like Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal by the Head of Division of Studies, Plan and Cooperation of MINHDU, Gerard Mandengue.

It was in December 2009 that the Cameroon Government launched an ambitious programme to construct some 10,000 lowcost houses in the country.

This was an attempt to contend the growing numbers of city dwellers and urban poor who continue to live in relatively precarious conditions in cities nationwide.

After four years the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, according to Mbwentchou, has only succeeded in constructing a total of 1675 of such houses.

To him, this is a poor performance owing to several challenges related to the current land tenure system in Cameroon, the limited resources available to Government and the lack of skilled labour in the housing sector.

He cited the absence of suitable financing for housing developers in both the private and public sector as one of the impediments. Going by him, it is a disturbing situation which can be addressed with contributions from MPs.

“We expect MPs to vote laws increasing the budget of lowcost housing. Secondly, they should vote laws according to social priorities,” he said. With time, these measures, including the fine-tuning of the ongoing land reforms, would greatly improve procedures to access land. This is expected to boost the supply of houses for all social categories of people, thereby improving living conditions.

For his part, Hon. Zondol Hersesse, President of the Network of Parliamentarians for the Promotion of Human Rights and Cyber Security, REPRODHOCY, regretted that the level of lowcost housing in Cameroon is still lower than the demand despite the fact the population keeps increasing.

He lauded the organisation of the seminar, saying MPs will be informed on Government actions in the lowcost housing domain in order for them to bring their own contributions.

The Senior Vice President of the House, Hon. Hilarion Etong, chaired the occasion.