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| Vincent Nji Ndumu handing over equipment recently at the Bamenda Regional Hospital |
Can
you please throw light on how Vincent Nji Ndumu took those first steps and how he
passed through the early stages of his education.
Well within my
professional career I have been a little bit lucky in the sense that I have had
a very smooth ascension from the day I was recruited as a Civil Engineer right
up to the day when I took my anticipated retirement. In a society where many
people stick to the very positions and some of them even ask for an extension
of their working life if somebody is not very comfortable with himself and with
his career he or she will not ask for anticipated retirement at the age of 45,
So I cannot point out any particular peak of my career. I can tell you that
serving in the North West here between 1993 and 1997 as Provincial Delegate of
Public Works actually exposed me to knowing the Region where I come from. This
means that I did a lot of work then as Provincial Delegate, discovering
virtually the entire North West Region. I can say that it was the best part of
my public service career.
A
look at your professional background presents you as a nation builder by virtue
of the things you have done and those that you are still doing.You are the Board
Chair of the Bamenda Regional Hospital and you have done much to improve upon
the state of the Regional Hospital.
Yes it is true that by
virtue of my position as Government Delegate to the Bamenda City Council I
automatically become chairman of the Bamenda Regional Hospital and as somebody
who wants to see to it that things move very well, along with the various
directors of the Regional Hospital, it is incumbent upon us to work together to
see to it that we improve upon the level of the hospital. It is therefore for
this reason that the Bamenda City Council for instance initiated the expansion
of the mortuary and then the ministry too through the dynamism of the then
Director of the hospital, Dr. Awasum Charles brought in new refrigerators, the
reason for which we have the mortuary that we have now. Then comes in Doctor
Njie Thompson, who is also a very hardworking and inspiring medical doctor for
that matter and director with whom we have initiated a lot of things for the
hospital with very little means to be able to carry out very great things.
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| Vincent Nji Ndumu inspects donated Equipment as they are offloaded at the Bamenda Regional Hospital |
Then
of course within our cooperation with the city of Dordrecht we were able to
work out the possibility of giving us fairly used material to be able to
upgrade the level of comfort of the hospital. This is what happened a few weeks
ago when we actually handed over a container of materials that was handed over
to us through the city of Dordrecht by the Schwarz Hospital within that very
municipality.
As
an entrepreneur, can you shed light on the company you run?
Yes I still run my
company even though presently I am working as Chairman of that company. It’s a building
and construction company and that’s something within my own field. There are definitely
a lot of difficulties in running a small or medium sized company in this
country because of financial difficulties. When you even manage and have a
small advance from a bank, to permit you carry out a job, it becomes very difficult
for you to be paid after the job is completed. There are a lot of difficulties
in carrying out contracts in Cameroon. However we are actually struggling to
live up to our expectations. As Government Delegate here I think it is only a
few months ago that the Head of State instituted some reasonable subventions
for our daily subsistence. This means therefore that without that company we
would not have been able to survive and take care of children.
Being
at the head of such a huge city there is always that possibility to be
misunderstood and for one’s efforts not to be appreciated in the way one would
have expected. How is the situation in Bamenda?
If I were a normal or
simple citizen as I will inevitably become one of these days when I will no longer
be Government Delegate, I would complain if within my own city we don’t have
good roads, we don’t have portable water and everywhere we don’t have street
lights and you have garbage all over the place. But as somebody who has had the
time to work and know exactly the means that are required for all these needs
to be met with, I think I now go middle ground. The issue is that we are still
a third world country which means that we cannot even make up to 2 or 3% of
what a normally developed country is. The city of Dordrecht with which Bamenda
has a twin relation has a population of 120.000 people while Bamenda can easily
be about 700.000 people. In 2013, the budget of the city of Dordrecht was about
950 million Euros in FCFA that is almost 750 billion FCFA. How do you compare
that with the city of Bamenda with a budget or net income of about 1.5 billion
FCFA in the same year? So you see the difference. We are all human beings with
the same needs whether you are a white or a black. In 2015 for instance the
income of Bamenda City Council was just 2.2 billion FCFA. If you have to spend
about 650 million FCFA just to collect garbage an activity that does not even
solve 50% of our garbage problem in town and then you engage in a project like
upgrading certain inner city roads like the ones around the city council, the
ones at the Pastoral Center, end of tar and the one at Foncha Street, Virgin
Island and so on which took about 750 millions amongst others. When you do that
calculation you can know exactly what is left for the City Council to pay
salaries to take care of security around the market, drain the toilets and so
on and so forth. When you measure all of these and you begin to know what
problems we have to manage in a city like this. I can easily tell you that if
you can give the Bamenda City Council ten times their income, we will still
have difficulties in satisfying everybody. It therefore means that we should
understand ourselves and keep on striving to be able to get better and manage
the little that we have with a lot of care. That is why you find out that up till
now the Government Delegate of the Bamenda City Council is using a second hand
vehicle that he was authorized to buy when he came in as Government Delegate in
2009. That second hand vehicle is still the one that I am using. I cannot even
drive that vehicle from here to Bafoussam. These are the issues that we go
through and unfortunately some people who are supposed to understand don’t.
How
politically involved is Vincent Nji Ndumu?
Some politicians in this
country told me when I was appointed that my political life is basically just
two weeks during a period of five years. What this means is that you have the
whole of your time working for the entire population. When you move around the
streets of Bamenda you see that these streets are not meant for CPDM militants
alone nor are they meant for UDC or whatever it is. It is meant for everybody.
When it is time for politics we carry out that politics within the rules
applicable. I can tell you that I militate for the CPDM but my job as
Government Delegate is not a political job but an administrative job and it is supposed
to be construed as such.
Somebody
may ask about those landmarks that will be remembered of your reign as
Government Delegate to the Bamenda City Council.
I don’t want to go into
self aggrandizement. I’d rather want to look at the brighter picture. We have
done a lot for this city and I think it’s just a question of being a little bit
patient. If you want to talk about the road infrastructure, we know that the
World Bank is finalizing their documentation for a tender to be done for the
Babadjou-Bamenda road and also about 15 Kilometers of dual carriage way within
the city of Bamenda. In so doing, it will take care of about 75% of the
difficult parts of our roads within the city. I also know that Bamenda has been
enlisted within the third phase of the French debt relief. I know that it is
something that is going to take a little bit of time but the fact that we’ve
been enlisted gives us hope that when they come our road infrastructure
projects will be carried out. I also know and we are presently doing it that
within our project of upgrading of inner city roads with double surface
dressing we will be able to have about 30 Km of road by the end of 2017 that
will facilitate movement within the inner city of Bamenda. I also know that we
have a programme for labour intensive projects of maintaining earth roads
within the city council that will start in 2017. Given the fact that we have
decided that in 2017 HYSACAM is going to come and take care of collecting of garbage,
it therefore means that we will transfer our energy and our resources towards
actually upgrading even the earth roads in the city of Bamenda. I equally know that
the Chinese are presently investing something like 10 billion FCFA on
increasing and transporting water within the neighborhoods of Bamenda. I know
very well that the Bamenda City Council has initiated the public private partnership
programme to be able to take care of some infrastructures like the main market
and the Nkwen Market as well as the construction of a Central Bus station using
the same public private partnership scheme. With all these I think the future
can only be bright. All we need is to be patient and accept that our needs are
many but our needs are few.
Les Gens Du Cameroun /Email:francoeko@gmail.com/Tel: +237678401408/+237696896001/
