The Minister for Housing and Town Planning, Jean Claude Mbwentchou and his colleague of State Property, Lands and Surveys Josephine Koung à Bessike last Friday undertook an inspection tour of some ongoing projects in Yaounde

within the framework of the current three-year emergency plan launched last year by the President of the Republic.

The plan, observing that development planning in its classical manner was lagging and not in consonance with the objectives of getting to the 2035 deadline to get Cameroon into economic emergence status by 2035, decided to take a short cut by instituting this emergency plan with a whopping FCFA955 Billion in investments in the health, agriculture and livestock as well as the road, energy, water and security sectors.

By taking the emergency route, government wanted to firmly express its desire to see these face-lifting projects take off the ground and be effectively realized.

But on the ground, there has been a lot of feet-dragging. Take the Mvog-Mbi area where government wanted to open up streets to make traffic movement a lot easier and, by extension, improve on urbanization so as to address not only traffic circulation but also the beauty of the city; for, it must be said, many of these districts had become a veritable eye sore especially for visitors coming into Yaounde as it was the case with the Mvog-Mbi area.

The ministerial visit of the other day revealed that not too many people, even involving public authorities, are necessarily aware of the urgency of getting our cities into the right shape, neither do they think that the coming organization of the female African Football Cup of Nations to be organized in Yaounde is any cause for immediate concern. O

therwise, at this stage and almost half gone into the emergency programme we would still be talking of those people still grumbling because they have still not been compensated for breaking down their houses; This is an exercise which should normally have been carried out long before the construction exercise started.

It is very easy to blame the local people as we did in our commentary of last week on the need to know that to obtain an omelette we must break eggs; but this is one example where there is a smell of corruption or bad practices.

Decision-makers cannot take such a snow-white posture when locals shout at the top of their voices that they have not been compensated for and which compensation will enable them try to build new homes elsewhere.

The development of our cities involves a serious review of developmental patterns which very often are at odds with the new vision envisioned in the ambitions of 2035. And that is why a whole emergency plan was developed to address the issue.

All the actors must therefore understand that the plan must be executed and that it is essential in the overall strategy to attain “Vision ‘35”. An emergency plan means what it means; that is putting everything else apart to ensure that it is realized!