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| Shey Jones Yembe |
You are a civil
engineer, chairman of the National Civil Engineering Laboratory amongst others,
what is your appraisal of the second bridge over the Wouri?
This is a
wonderful piece of job and I am so happy to know the President of the republic
has put emphasis on it. I was even very elated when he talked of the
engineering aspect of it. I said whao, so he is even worried about those
details because more often a politician should just be worried about the
grandeur of the structure and not bothered about the technical challenges. This
will be a huge project for us. It will let Cameroonian engineers touch some of
the high technology in civil engineering and make Cameroon grow. What we are
going to get from it as engineers or technicians will be great and we will use
the transferred technology in other domains; that is talking about engineering.
Now talking as the Chairman of National Civil Engineering Laboratory
(Labogenie), I am so proud to know that our national laboratory has been taken
and was one of the most important laboratories to do the control works. Because
the works are very challenging we need to make sure that the quality of the
work is well done and choosing Labogenie for us is a mark of confidence that we
are doing the right thing or that the Labogenie company; the government company
is doing the right thing.
The project is
sponsored by the French government, what guarantees are there that Labogenie’s
oversights will be respected?
For the works to
be paid, it must be the control mission that does the invoices and authorizes
payment. The French are financing to the tune of FCFA 120 billion and it is a
French company that is executing the work. So it is the control mission that
can permit payment after controlling what has been done. It’s true, it is also
Egis a French company but they cannot just pay the works without haven
guaranteed that everything has been controlled technically. So Labogenie is doing
the geotechnical part of it while control mission is doing the invoicing and to
do the invoicing it has to see the work done using the technical results from
cards that Labogenie would have done before confirming the payment. So there is
nothing like they are going to ignore what Labogenie says. And even companies
have gone beyond sharing control missions to laboratories as gendarmes rather
than people who accompany you because if you do work and in future that work
did not succeed and you had to come back on it because there is always a
guarantee from the time that they receive the work to final reception, it would
cost you more than if you just listened to those who do the technical studies.
This is so because the technical test gives you the exact and precise way to
mix your concrete with the right quantities of cement and moisture levels. That
would help you to make sure that the infrastructure you have constructed even
after reception it will not have to do require immediate repairs. So today,
companies sometimes even have their own laboratories to be cock sure that the
test we are talking about have been truly and properly done, so Labogenie
cannot be ignored in this giant structure. On the contrary I can testify with
you that SOGEA SATOM which is the construction company will surely have its own
laboratory and even make sure that the laboratory is up to date, if possible
even better than Labogenie’s laboratory to ensure that they have the best
quality. It doesn’t cost them very much sometimes to have the right thing, for
example; having good concrete sometimes is not the amount of cement you add to
it, if you respect the quantity of cement that was done for the studies, then
you can either fix or spoil your concrete by putting so much water or very little
water. Meanwhile if the tests were properly done and you calibrated how much
water you are putting every time you are doing your concrete, you will have the
right thing. Also just by vibrating just to the optimal, not vibrating it too
much or too little, you will have good quality. Those are the things that
Labogenie would help them to do properly. It would be the Laboratory to
accompany the construction company rather than to gendarme the company.
You are also a
business man, how will the construction of a second bridge over the Wouri River
help business activities in the city of Douala and its environs?
One of the
things that make business to grow or not to grow is being able to move goods
left and right. A company becomes only important in Douala or in Bonaberi, or
around the Moungo or in Tiko or anywhere, just as much as it is possible to
produce whatever you are producing; your yogurt or whatever and be able to
bring to Douala without having to wait at Bikoko, at the entrance for 2-3
hours; then that company becomes useless. But if you know that you can produce
something in Tiko, Limbe, Nkongsamba, Melong, Dschang and be able to bring it
to Douala without having to waste time on the way, then you could also have
industries in the hinterlands and decongest Douala a little bit. So for us
businessmen, we think that this is another opportunity that will make the whole
sub region profit and make Douala become that huge mega pole of industries that
will profit us in one way or the other. If you open a shop alone in an area
your business will never grow. It is better when you have many more business
people around you and there is competition then you grow with respect to the
environment that has become very good for business.
If I understand
the technical specifications of the new bridge, it will have five lanes on one
side and two three lanes on the other side. But all the lanes will empty
themselves unto the small road on both sides of the river
There will be
two bridges side by side; I am not talking about the old bridge; the new
bridges. So we are going to end up with three bridges on the Wouri at that
point next to each other. The new bridge has two bridges; one for road
transport and one for railway. And the railway this time will have two lanes so
that a train could even be going to Bonaberi while another one is going to
Douala. They don’t have to wait until they have crossed which is a wonderful
thing. Then the road has five lanes; you have three lanes coming into Douala
from Bonaberi on the other side and two lanes moving from Douala to Bonaberi.
You will ask me why they did that. The intension is that the old bridge would
be used for the traffic from Douala into Bonaberi which means that you are
virtually having 3 lanes into Douala and out of Douala. Now you have all of
those wonderful roads and then you most probably don’t have the access roads to
it to make the traffic continue otherwise you would have stopped a bottleneck
here and created another one on one side or the other. But if you listened to
the President and the Government Delegate to the Douala City council, you would
have heard that there is this program that has even existed before the bridge
which they are going to also execute still financed by the French Development
Cooperation. It involves opening the West end of Douala and the East end of
Douala (the road from Douala to Yaounde.) You would have noticed at village
which is the East end that there have already moved people out of the road and
widened it and there are also going to open up the West end; that is the side
to Bonaberi. So the bridge will be on while those other projects will be going
on. Otherwise it will be useless having a bridge without creating the roads
that way. So up to Bikoko for example, the lanes will be opened up to Bikoko,
by the time you are splitting your traffic to the Southwest or to the West, you
could have had the traffic flow properly.
You are the
board chair of the Douala Ports Authority. How do you think the construction of
this bridge will help activities at the Douala Ports, especially as you are
involved in heavy duty activities?
When the
President of the Republic appointed us a few months ago, me and the General
Manager; Mr Etoundi Oyono, he gave us an assignment to reduce the time that
goods stay at the ports. We have made a lot of effort on that front. We had
also to make sure that dredging was done at the proper prices which we have
also been able to do. Equally we had to make sure that we can refill the
coffers as it used to be which we have also done. We succeeded in getting out
goods in good time in collaboration with the ‘guichette unique’ or the
one-stop-shop and then the customs office also because all does not only depend
on us. It depends on the transit companies, it depends on the customs, it depends
on the one-stop-shop, what they call in French ‘guichette unique.’ But we have
done all those efforts and reduced the time tremendously. But there was a
problem; sometimes you get out goods and there will go and stay in Yassa on the
East end for long because of traffic congestion. Sometimes the drivers just
don’t move out, they wait till it is night; so they waste the whole
day…..sometimes if something happened on a single bridge, then you can be there
for two days and they wouldn’t be able to drive out. So with this new
opportunity now, I think that goods are going to flow into the hinterlands
properly. Countries that we play transit for them like the Central African
Republic and Chad would be able to profit from all of this. The Bonaberi road
is the most used road in all of Cameroon, you wouldn’t believe it but that is
how it is. When they take goods out of the Douala Ports, there are seven
regions of Cameroon that use that road and that bridge to carry goods, so it
makes 7 and 3 countries; that is, Cameroon itself, Chad, and the Central
African Republic. Today that you have this bridge, traffic is going to be able
to flow out of and into Douala easily. There is also a program the President
unveiled, and the road is already being done, the Foumban-Ngaoundere road. If
this road is finally done, because they are presently doing some patches, it
will ease traffic flow alot. I had the privilege my company did some bridges on
that road also and they are doing it. By the time it is done, travelling from
Douala through Bafoussam, Foumban then to Ngaoundere and finally to Chad or the
Central African Republic or to go to the Far North; North and Adamawa would be
faster than going back through Yaounde to pass through the East. You see that
if you did that road and you didn’t prepare Bonaberi properly, then all the
goods that you are getting out of the ports will still have to go back through
Yaounde. So those are the things that we at the ports are so happy about,
because now we can work and be sure that the goods will go in time. Because
what is important to an importer from Central African Republic is when the
goods finally get to Bangui. The importer is not interested that we got it out
of the ports in 2 or 3 days. So if we got the goods out even in one day and they
spent another 2 days at the Bonaberi Bridge because there was a problem or in
Yassa, for him goods are still not flowing properly and that is very bad for
the transit country that we are.
From what you
are saying, definitely the construction of the bridge will have an impact on
the cost of goods and services
Tremendously,
they have been people who have slept in Douala town while they are living in
Bonaberi just because there was a problem on the bridge. The construction of
this bridge is a tremendous thing, it is so much money but you know for things
that have to be for seventy-five (75) to one hundred (100) years, you have to
do it. We are doing it for posterity. We are spending a lot of money but if you
go to do the calculation of people who are going to spend less fuel, wasting
time waiting to cross the bridge, sooner or later the bridge would have faded
off. So I think that it is a wonderful thing that happened to us. Unfortunately
we don’t always have money to do all those things. There are lots and lots of
things that we could still do for Cameroon but we are not going to do all of
them at the same time. When I say we, I am talking about us Cameroonians
because me I am just a citizen like you, I am just talking about us achieving
for ourselves.
Culled from
Cameroon Calling, CRTV
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