UCC urges gov’t to pay mayors’ salaries

Mayors of the Northwest Region, meeting in conclave under the banner of the United Councils and Cities of Cameroon, UCCC, July 11, resolved among other things, that the Government should immediately implement their long awaited salaries.

Bernard Tosam, the Mayor of Belo, who chaired the meeting, told The Post that; “it is an aberration that Mayors, of all elected officials, should go without salaries. Remember that Mayors work round the clock, throughout the year.”

Mayor Abel Mbombo Chenwi of Ndop said the Government seems to be “catching the decentralisation process by the tail. Put differently, it seems to be taking back with the left hand what they are giving with the right hand.”

Chenwi felt that, “if councils must be veritable catalysts of local development, they must be empowered with concomitant resources to handle the transferred competences.”

Participants were embarrassed that some competences, transferred to councils in 2010, were now stealthily being withdrawn and handed over to administrative authorities and deconcentrated services.

“The Law of July 22, 2004,”he continued, “has devolved panoply of responsibilities to the councils. This, of course, requires colossal resources, human and material, to effectively manage those competences. Thus, decentralised services should flow with the necessary funds”

Another resolution by the Mayors has to do with the creation of Tenders Boards at the Council level. They argued that, to effectively grapple with development projects, they needed to control the process from start to finish. They pointed out that contractors arrive in councils and proceed with projects without informing the Mayors, despite instructions from the Governor of the Northwest Region, stressing that, Mayors are owners of all projects in their municipalities.

Before the meeting rose, the Mayors decided to send a seven-person delegation to Yaounde to confer with the different competent authorities on the diverse issues discussed during their confab.