Gov't institutes means to reduce road maintenance bills

Cameroonian Prime Minister, Philémon Yang, published an order "implementing a model dossier of specialised bid solicitation in the procurement for tenders in maintenance or rehabilitation of roads assisted by innovative products or not".

Henceforth this government text authorises the use of five new products, in the nomenclature of earth roads in Cameroon, in order we learn, to reduce the overall bill for this activity, and compensate for insufficient laterite quarries in the country.

According to the government daily, which cites sources in the Ministry of Public Works, the five products newly authorised are : Con-Aid/CBR Plus, manufactured in South Africa ; Rocamix from the Chinese firm Beijing Medicines and Health products IMP; products from System Consolid, manufactured by a Spanish firm ; and Pavement Composite Technology, manufactured in the USA by the company Integrated Traffic System Inc. Carboncor, the South African product used for cold coating the road has also been authorised.

Experts tell us that, an earth road maintained with these products does not require further maintenance for a period of five years. Thus thanks to these products, the government should be able to make savings in its overall road maintenance budget, and therefore increase the length of roads maintained in the country.

In order to further reduce the cost of road maintenance, the Cameroonian government, we learn, is actually in discussion with the manufacturers of these different innovative products so that production units could be set up in Cameroon, with the principal target of reducing costs linked to importing these products.

As a reminder, less than 10% of Cameroon's road network is maintained, because of insufficient financial resources for the works, according to the Road Fund. Indeed, we learn, the main source for road maintenance is part of a special tax on petroleum products paid by the distributors of petroleum products.

This fee actually amounts to FCFA 55 billion yearly, the Director of the Road Fund stated, while maintaining a single kilometre of earth road, of which the entire network is estimated at 100,000 kms (excluding asphalted roads), costs about FCFA 2 million.