Douala City Council Combats Drainage Problems

The project seeks to modernise the city and improve life.

Rainfall in the commercial and industrial city Douala that scarcely abated throughout 4 months now might have renewed public awareness against backyard drainage problems. A visible feature that describes this awareness is the ongoing construction of some major ducts in New Bell by the Douala City Council (DCC) in response to pollution and flooding whose potentials for damage has increased exponentially.

Solving the two most common backyard drainage problems is one of the most welcome relief efforts against the dangerous cohabitation between residents and stagnant water that drowns expensive structures and undermines health. Persistent downpours, according to neighbours, turned the area between Shell New-Bell and the Douala II Council, where the channel is being constructed, into swamps. The PDUE-Sponsored project is in accordance with a recent City Council measure to avert pollution and flooding around homes in the city.

The 1.5-kilometre conduit, whose construction started in January 2013 to end in March 2014, costs slightly above FCFA 785 million, according to staff of the executing company, SMAR SARL. Technicians working on the conduit explain that where the land is flat, soil dense and water table high, designing a good drainage for evacuation of household waste is an obvious challenge to poorly-trained builders and inadequately sensitised residents. For them, drainage problems in the New Bell neighbourhood to result from one or a mixture of these phenomena.

"Some residents choose to pollute as they like," says Y. Ngenge, a resident, "and this is compounded by heavy rainfall which is the periodic catalyst that sets the drainage problems into gear." Another resident, Ngemba Jeanne, holds that poorly-drained sites have become flooded for a short time where drainage structures are in place, or extended periods where they are not. She adds that they are happy with the construction of the conduit as it will soon free them from flooding.