Cameroon will in the weeks ahead experiment new ways of controlling weighing stations and especially the management of fuel tankers whose overloading greatly deteriorates the road network. Members of an inter-ministerial follow-up committee of weighing stations met in Yaounde yesterday June 26 to evaluate the path covered in drawing up of a calendar for the implementation of the new instruments for the control of fuel tankers.

The meeting was therefore to finalise the calendar which is to be submitted to government for approval. The session was notably to assess the level of implementing the recommendations of the committee's first session for the year which held on March 26, 2014. Speaking during the session, the inter-ministerial Steering Committee President, Akono Mvondo Léopold, said halting the damages caused by recalcitrant fuel tankers on the road to ensure that the country's road infrastructure are jealously protected for posterity should be a preoccupation of all.

He noted that unannounced controls are hence undertaken in the 17 functional weighing stations to ensure that malpractices are buried as well as the involvement of Camtel to provide technical assistance notably arming 21 weighing stations with optical fibre in view of installing surveillance cameras that can automatically transmit information on weighing operation. Work is reportedly on course and cables have been buried in some weighing stations already.

The committee members noted that control gadgets have been functioning at near optimum but for some light technical hitches like the breakdown in the functioning of electrical installations. It emerged from the session that systematic offloading of overloaded trucks recommended as a sure way of saving the road network from deterioration is applicable.

On the outcome of the corruption combat-operation conceived for sand trucks plying the Yaounde-Ebebda road and which was to be reinforced by the Governor of the Centre Region, the committee noted that a report is already available. It was also disclosed during yesterday's meeting that a team of experts from the Ministry of Public Works has been to France to get a plant and other equipment that could help to curb the deviation of weighing stations by overloaded heavy-duty trucks.

But the challenge still remains dotting the national road network with state-of-the-art equipment that can counter the growing unscrupulous activities of truck drivers sometimes with the complicity of control agents that are detrimental to the country's roads.