Where are the gatekeepers?

The public authorities have had another difficult weekend grappling with another collapsed building! One too many, one would say.

A rickety structure along the Marc Vivien Road aka Nouvelle Route Omnisports, has been an object of attraction for quite some time now as with every passing day, a new storey is added to the fragile frame. Commuters comment about the weakness of the structure as they drive pass.

This weekend, the expected tragedy struck as, probably a last straw breaking the camel’s back, there was probably one block too much to cause the building to collapse like a pile of dominoes.

These regular occurrences are becoming a very vexing problem for Yaounde residents because with each passing incident generally comes an outcry for the public authorities to show more concern especially by way of law enforcement.

For, too often all these occur because of either the near-indifference of these authorities or simply because of the laxity observed in the respect of building laws or even because of corrupt practices.

There is no point revisiting past mishaps; but how can we so quickly forget some the painful ones, generally incurring the loss of human life such as the one in Douala in July 2013 in which a young girl of four and her pregnant mother were killed in a collapsing house?

Before the Douala incident, six people had died in the Nkolndongo neighbourhood in Yaounde from a similar incident and quite recently – September 2015 – there was another one occasioning the loss of life in Nkogmondo in Douala.

On paper, legislation exists on what to do in the process of building a house, especially one with several storeys. The issue is therefore, about the respect for procedure and regularly controlling construction sites.

The regularity of these incidents is becoming a cause for concern and the responsible officers charged with ensuring due process must sit up! These gatekeepers are still too invisible in a crucial area such as that of house construction.