Private Members' Bill: Hon. Awudu speech

The Chairman of the Committee on Production and Trade,

Honourable Members of the said Committee,

I want to thank you for your kind words to me and to members of the SDF Parliamentary Group accompanying me and for the conviviality that characterized our discussion of this Private Members’ bill to lay down Rules Governing the Protection and Preservation of Water Catchment Areas, Watersheds and Wetlands in Cameroon.

I wish to first of all extend my cordial greetings to you. I would also like to say that it seems to me the explanatory statement which has just been read out to you is quite explicit.

However, to forestall the kind of confusion that arose during the Chairmen’s Conference between this Private Members’ bill and Law No. 98/005 of 14 April 1998 to lay down rules governing water resources, we have deemed it necessary to delete from the first paragraph of the said explanatory statement the following statement: “there is an adage that water is life”.

In the place of the above adage in the English version, we have now inserted the word “endow” between the expression “…important source of life…” and “…natural resources…” The corrected version now reads as follows: “water catchment areas…and are …endowed with … resources” The rest shall remain unchanged.

May I crave the indulgence of this august Committee to allow me suppress the expressions “water” and “diversify” from the second paragraph and to replace them after the word “relies” with “ partially… on biodiversity” on the one hand, and to insert the qualifying adjective “improved” after the expression “for ” on the other hand.

The corrected version now reads: “In fact, Cameroon’s economy partially relies on biodiversity for improved productivity”.

At the beginning of the fourth paragraph, the “accent grave” which unfortunately slipped into the word “a” in the French version was deleted.

Mr Speaker,

Honourable Committee members

Let me now talk about the purpose of this Private Members’ bill that I am defending before you today.

It is titled “Private Members’ bill to lay down Rules Governing the Protection and Preservation of Water Catchment Areas, Watersheds and Wetlands in Cameroon.

The objective of this Private Members’ bill is to manage the areas concerned.

Such management shall be made possible through a legal or even regulatory regime on the one hand, and a radical fight against the phenomenon of Climate Change on the other hand.

One of the concerns here is to discard from potential exploiters the idea of transforming, denaturing or even acting in contravention.

It is therefore due to the absence or obsolescence of current legislation governing such a domain that we deemed it necessary to table this Private Members’ bill which, if adopted, will fill this vacuum which seems glaring to all of us.

Concerning the sections of the Private Members’ bill, we maintain the substance. As for the form, we already indicated the presence of typos under Section 2 at the level of the seventh dash (omission of “accent grave” on the word “a”). Under Section 3 (the definite pronoun “aux” has been deleted) in the French version. Similarly, under Section 4, second line, “s” has been deleted from the qualifying adjective “préjudiciable” in the French version.

Dear Committee Members, while reassuring you of my willingness to provide the desired clarifications, I want to reiterate that this Private Members’ bill neither relates, in any way, to Law No. 98/005 of 14 April 1998 to lay down rules governing water resources nor relates to the exploitation and management of water resources which both concern the general policy on water resources distribution.

I thank you for your kind attention

HON. AWUDU MBAYA CYPRIAN