Letter to the Editor -- Cleanup Campaign and Waste Disposal or Management: The case of Bamenda Urban town

Permit me congratulate you for the wonderful innovation you've put up in your cherished newspaper, The Frontier Telegraph. We are happy you are back, and we hope you've come to stay. Kindly give me space in your widely circulated paper to make a few observations on the above subject.

When you look at what is going on throughout the country in the name of cleanup campaigns, you will see that in spite of the fact that business and other activities are grounded during the period of the campaign, little or nothing is realized. One can observe that the towns are clean only for a day or two despite the effort put in place by the actors concerned.

The idea of keeping our towns or quarters clean is a good one but the approach is wrong and makes the whole concept porous and wanting. In Bamenda, there are points either reserved by the Council or other people for waste disposal. The waste that is deposited at some of the places on cleanup day is not usually collected before the next cleanup and the result is that these places give a type of odour which is unbearable when one passes by. At the time of writing this piece, there was a heap in front of Melton Communication, City Chemist Roundabout. I don't know how people who own shops around where these refuse is dumped stay all day with the odour that emanate from the heaps dotted here and there. Bamenda was once rated the cleanest town in Cameroon by whom so ever. In fact, the assessment was done based only on some major streets while the quarters stink. There are commercial houses in town without toilet facilities.

One of the problems is that of storey buildings or self-contain houses in Bamenda. Some of them pose a real health hazard to people. Before one builds a house in an urban area, he/she must have obtain a building plan from the Council or bring one which is studied and accepted by the Council before a permit is issued. What do the Council study? Do they follow up to see how things are done? Should we say an approved building plan is necessary with the structures we are seeing now? Some people may say it is what we are seeing but I differ from that.

Let us take one example out of so many. When you are standing or passing in front of National Financial Credit Bank fondly called 'The White House" sometimes, there is an odour you get from the gutter in front of the building. That is a building housing one of the best restaurants in town. NFC workers must be going through hell or have just gotten use to it. The Bamenda Council is supposed to do a follow up to see whether the septic or sock-away tanks of these type of houses are up to standard and not shallow as to get flooded fast; or is the Government Delegate ashamed to send Council sanitary officials around because the Bamenda main market's septic tank is also a problem to those who sell eru behind it?

Pass or enter the main market through the gate from Ideal Park and you will bear with me. If a beautiful structure like the one mentioned above and so many others stink as if the toilet of the buildings are in the gutters, can someone tell me that the Council is not away or that my nostrils smells differently from that of a normal human being? Should our town be clean only when there is an event that will attract strangers or when there is bicycle race? Bamenda gutters stink not only with garbage but with human faeces. We should try the sanitary inspection system which existed in the then West Cameroon days and the result will just be as perfect as in the sixties. Councils should recruit and train more Sanitary Inspectors and assign them to inspect, control and bring defaulters to book; then our towns and villages will sooner or later have a natural look void of Prefectoral cleanup orders and 48 hours yearly business wastage. And if other towns can not practice this method, Bamenda can pave the way for them to follow. After all, Cameroon have two cultures, so people are bound to reason differently too.

Bamenda Urban Council should also cause an investigation to bring out more facts about waste disposal from self contain houses before we start dying of an out break of a contagious disease.

 -- Bomnsa Nformi Edward,
City Chemist Round About, Bamenda