Editorial: What mayors for urban development?

With 52% of Cameroon’s population pulled to urban centres clustered with its slums and slumps, the national forum on development which ended in Yaounde last Wednesday gives tasking home work to mayors now that ministries have transferred development resources to the municipalities.

Most of the urban centres have typically similar problems. The quandaries have been identified as poverty, over crowdedness, haphazard building of houses, inadequate social amenities and poor garbage collection systems.

Others include environmental hazards like floods caused by slums that block drainage systems, loss of trees and parks in urban centres, inadequate access streets, good drinking water and diseases caused by toxic waste dumping.

When Jean Claude Mbwentchou, minister of housing and urban development addressed the urban development forum he put the challenge before participants who included mayors of municipalities across the country.

He expressed government’s determination to set a harmonious and durable development plan that will meet with the exigencies of the future.

With an ever-growing exodus from rural to the urban centres in search of jobs that are hardly there, the rate of urbanisation will continue to soar.

As the minister pointed out to some 300 participants, there is the need to put all hands on deck to prevent the urban centres degenerating into squalors as are observed in some of Cameroon’s cities.

Although stakeholders include the ministries of housing and urban development, land tenure, environment and nature protection, public health and the private sector actors like architects, the nerve centre of urban development are mayors.

With the decentralisation policy almost in full gear, mayors will have to brace up to the challenge. They issue building permits, have the authority to break down houses that do not conform to the regulation in force and ensure the collection of garbage. It is also their responsibility to spearhead the provision of basic amenities and infrastructure in their cities and municipalities.

The vexing question is, are mayors up to the task given the academic and managerial deficiencies of many of the municipal politicians in council chambers?

Over the years, the transparency search light has focused on general managers of state corporations, taxation, the police, gendarmes and the treasuries picked out as avenues of corruption, misappropriation and embezzlement.

The mayors and the likes of government delegates are often not rigorously scrutinized, yet many of the councils are the mothers of embezzlement.

Take the case of Muyuka council for example. Last week, its new mayor, Michael Nkeng disclosed at a council session that money was given by FEICOM to provide drinking water but the work was not done yet full payment made. “FEICOM had earlier financed a water project in Bafia for which till date the project has not been realised.

It is lamentable that despite the fact that the water project was not realised, paradoxically, there are documents in my office signed by some former mayors attesting that the project had been received until final acceptance certificates issued and the guarantee retention fee reimbursed”, the mayor divulged.

Another scandalous example of misdeeds in councils is in enclave Lebialem division where two used caterpillars were bought for Wabane and Alou councils for a total of 60MFCFA without going through a tender. The supplier collected 300MFCFA from the public investment budget for the swindling deal.

It is also in the same council where a jalopy pick-up truck was supplied for 25MFCFA by the same “contractor”. Even after an alarm was raised which attracted the National Anti-corruption Commission, NACC to visit the division, the alleged perpetrators are still boasting of their ‘untouchability’ as no action has been taken against them.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of rip-offs multiplying in some of the councils across the country that are being challenged to execute urban development plans of the future.

For a harmonised development plan of the urban centres to achieve set objectives, The Guardian Post is of the strong argument that mayors must first of all be given good salaries so as to curb the rate of corruption and money stealing meant for development projects.

The anti-corruption bodies must act with dispatch when whistle-blowers sound the alarm and prosecute the culprits without delay. Isn’t it true that delay defeats equity? Unlike parliamentarians who have the national territory as their constituencies when elected, senators are for regional entities.

Senators must assert their authority and scrutinse the development projects in their regional constituencies and not just from their divisions of origin to ensure the success of national development goals.

To meet some of the challenges in futuristic urban development, it will require stringent municipal accountability, scrutiny and services. Turning urbanisation into cloaks of smog and hell on earth as is observed even in developed countries is not an issue to be left to mayors alone even though they have the greatest responsibilities.

Urban centres are globally growing faster than the services being provided. The dream for employment and prosperity entices teeming populations to crowded towns and cities enveloped in problems such as insufficient water availability, waste-disposal problems exacerbated by lack of good housing and land. Land which when provided like in the case of Fako division is grabbed by unscrupulous administrators and chiefs with no provision for play grounds and urban gardens.

The internationally authoritative National Geographic Society suggests solutions for a good urban planning system as “Combat poverty by promoting economic development and job creation. Involve local community in local government.

Reduce air pollution by upgrading energy use and alternative transport systems. Create private-public partnerships to provide services such as waste disposal and housing. And Plant trees and incorporate the care of city green spaces as a key element in urban planning.”

The report of the seminar on the national urban development plan should not be far from that but the resolutions need to be implemented by mayors in whose constituencies the majority of Cameroonians live so that urban centres are not only venues to look for jobs. The urban space should be environmentally-friendly and in the words of poet William Cowper: “God made the country and man made the towns”.