Housing project divides the Mayor and the Prefect Bangangté

A building construction started by the mayor of Bangangté, Celestine Ketcha Courtès, near the prefecture of the city few months ago has led to a misunderstanding between the two.

The project ha has not gone down well with the prefect of the department of Nde, Ernest Samuel Christian Ebelle, who argued that it occupies a private domain of the State of Cameroon.

In its edition of Monday, August 31, 2015, the daily Mutations newspaper echoed the squabble in the local development in the region. On August 5, the Prefect of Nde, Ernest Samuel Christian Ebelle, signed a correspondence that said "stop work" of building construction in permanent materials, in front of the county center of Bangangté finances, subject to a joint funding from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the State of Cameroon, the Special Fund of equipment and inter-action (Feicom) and council of Bangangté, under the Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Project in semi-urban (ACAP-Msu).

Mutations indicated that the constructed work was to end by the end of this year. It was a construction of a "complex toilet” equipped with a cafeteria, to accompany another project underway for a recreational area for the population. For the prefect, this space coveted by the town hall is a private domain of the State. In excerpts from his correspondence relayed by the newspaper, we read the following:

"I want you to remember that this space is part of the private domain of the State of Cameroon land -title 1295 / Nde - and never has been assigned to the town. Moreover, you did not provide any document for this. Similarly, this cavalier way of acting of a municipal authority in the security context of the hour seems inopportune and is a big sprained vision of the government of the Republic that has always reserved the site in favour of a green area already expected from the other populations. Stop forthwith the above-mentioned works and demolish the existing or you face the risk of forcing me to use the remedies provided by the regulations."

In response, the mayor of Bangangté ,Celestine Ketcha Courtès, in a letter on August 10, 2015 to the prefect said the project is beneficiary to the town and the contracting book is at the Ministry of Water and Energy (Minee).

It also specifies that construction undertaken "does not entail transfer of ownership of the site in the town hall which is beneficial projects from the transferred powers or fruit of cooperation. This book is similar to the latrines built under the same project in five primary schools in the municipality of Bangangté: to market entry A, the Bangangté District Hospital, health centers and even in front of the CPDM party house.

However, the site remains the property of the State of Cameroon. In general, resume our minds and on formal parallelism needs, retype the head site in which you have notified this decision to resume work in peace for this construction, more than justified for our people.

According to the Prefect, it is therefore obvious an injunction or attempted destruction would be staggering for our citizens and constitutes clearly an abuse of authority, devastating for the image of the administration and trouble vector to public order for these people who, from the announcement of a public garden, expressed the wish to see a purification works."

According to Mutations, if the work stoppage continues, funds should return to Bad. The mayor of his Bangangté suspects his tutelage of wanting to weaken, especially a "number" of councilors against the head of the municipal executive, or trying to "block" projects that can allow the mayor to have the coast to the population.