One of the outcomes of the first ordinary session of the Bamenda city council that held June 3 was the unanimous decision by councilors to drag the government-owned Ayaba Hotel to court over 32 years of unpaid dividends to the City.
Presenting the matter before the 18-man Grand Councilors and the Mezam SDO, Supervisory Authority, Vincent Nji Ndumu, Government Delegate to the Bamenda City Council, disclosed that since 1982 that the City Council has put in shares worth, 27.5 MFCFA, the hotel has never paid them even a franc as dividends. He said that several attempts to collect the estimated 240MFCFA dividends hit the rocks. The Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Ndumu said, has given them the go ahead to drag the hotel to court.
Addressing the water crisis in the Bamenda city council area, the councilors observed that several residents are dying from water related-diseases - they attributed it to untreated water. The acute water shortage they said, is as a result of the shutdown of public taps.
Ndumu explained that the city council had no choice than to privatize public taps because attributing it to high bills. He said the city used to pay over 22MFCFA monthly for public taps. However, the Secretary-General of the Bamenda City Council, Fomefred Victor, assured the councilors that before June is over, public taps should all go functional again, regretting that there are only about 50 public taps in the Bamenda city council area for a population of over 500.000.
In a bid to mitigate water problems in Bamenda, Bafoussam and Bertoua cities, the First Assistant SDO for Mezam, Ndoumbe Pierre Dika, who deputized for the SDO, announced that government has already allocated FCFA 8 billion for CAMWATER project.
Another burning issue deliberated upon at the session was the poor road network in Bamenda, to which the Government Delegate explained that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development was taking care of. He said the roads require complete reconstruction given that what exist now was constructed since 1983. "For your information, the Minister of Investment has accorded FCFA 150 million for urgent road projects in our city while the Minister of Housing and Urban Development has equally disbursed FCFA 150million for our road projects." He said the council will henceforth be tarring at least 2km of roads in each of the three councils that make up the Bamenda city council viz Bamenda I, II and III.
Concerning the Mezam administration's feet-dragging on implementing the grand councilors' deliberation on sending commercial motorbikes off city streets, the First Assistant SDO said the decision would have been implemented long ago but for the fact that Mezam faces acute shortage of forces of law and order. He, however, assured the grand councilors that the commercial motorbikes would be kicked out of town before 2014 is over. The sum of FCFA 2.2 billions was budgeted for the 2013/2014 administrative accounts.
