Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi , Public Works Minister
The Minister of Public Works has vowed to sue contractors who include falsified documents in bid documents submitted for contracts awards.
Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi was talking to contractors he summoned at his cabinet yesterday to explain why they had not completed contracts awarded them.
Opening the five day working session with the contractors, he stated sternly; “I want to inform you that when we are done working with you here. We will examine your documents. It will no longer suffice for you to present a vehicle owner’s document, we will go out there and see the vehicles. If we find out you lied in your documentation, we will sue you.”
A total of 29 companies were present. Some five others failed to show up. Some of them had completely abandoned road maintenance projects while others had suspended work.
“I convened this meeting because we realized that 406 contracts are supposed to be executed on our roads as far as maintenance is concerned. But unfortunately, as you can see, the state of our roads is unacceptable. We have called these contractors so that together we can identify what their difficulties are and what can be done about it”, the minister told The Cameroon Journal in an interview, shortly after the opening of the working session.
The Journal gathered from the communication unit of the ministry that several maintenance projects earmarked for 2014 and 2015 were never executed. Government has set aside over 41billion francs CFA for work to be completed on portions of the said roads which require periodic maintenance. These include the Yaounde-Pont Ndoupe-Douala-Limbe-Idenau road; the Carrefour Nsimalen-Ebolowa road; and the Ebolowa- Ambam stretch of the national road number 2.
Some of the contractors denied shouldering the blame for non-completion of road maintenance projects. The companies concerned are NEO TP Sarl, SOCOTREX TP Sarl, AN’NDAL Sarl, Ets Aboubakar Chetima, Groupement PTS Construction/MISEP,PANI,TRABES,TE Talom Tech, Jean Dupuch Export, ALCATOR, EBM, MEDCOM Sarl, Motase and Sons, Groupement Bofas/Tamso, Swin Company Ltd among others.
Pierre Celestin Ntep of SOCOTREX TP Sarl, told The Journal that it is due to delays in administrative procedures that a road maintenance contract his company was supposed to complete in 2014, would only be completed by March 2016.
Souffo Tchinda, on his part, said his company could not complete a road maintenance project within deadline because of time-consuming government control processes. “We are not to blame, and I would not blame government because the control process is very important” he told The source
Some of them complained that construction work is sometimes hindered by protesting citizens who are disgruntled by meager indemnities paid for their landed property on which a road is to be constructed.
Over 89.5billion FCFA has been allocated from the road fund, for road maintenance across the country this year. These would include maintenance of both earth and tarred roads.
11.48billion of the total amount has been allocated for priority earth and tarred roads while 7.38 billion FCFA goes into maintenance of priority rural roads.
Some 21.28 billion FCFA is earmarked for periodic maintenance of the Yaounde-Pont Ndoupe-Douala-Limbe stretch of the national road number 3 while 3.72billion is allocated for protection of national heritage and road maintenance control missions.
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