The Community Developer….. Fongu Cletus

Mr. Fongu Cletus

Fongu Cletus, the Community Developer is at the head of the Bamenda III Municipality, an area of the Bamenda City Council still fraught with a lot of infrastructural challenges. The Bamenda III Municipality and its transforming face stand as testimony to the community development qualities of Fongu Cletus. The successful growth of a third world nation like Cameroon depends on the good management of Local Government Areas like Bamenda III. Cameroon People took out time to visit and appreciate the community development initiatives of Fongu Cletus as Mayor of Bamenda III Municipality.

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In order to meet up with the current water shortages and difficulties within the Bamenda III Municipality, the council in accordance with her partners have constructed a second Giant water Reservoir with a capacity of 200m3 (200,000Litres) added to the former with a production capacity of 80m3(80,000litres). This second storage tank will improve filtration, sustain network and reduce shortages. In addition, with the establishment of a basement plate, another pump will be mounted thus intensifying water production and curbing shortages in quarters with difficulties to access water due to their location altitude and height. 

Mayor Fongu Cletus and Mayor Njong Donatus of Kumbo during Sister Cities International Conference Colorado 2018

The area is well enforced security wise with a site office and a barrier wall
Get more Infors on our website www.bamenda3council.org/

Bamenda III Council offering help to Internally Displaced People

 

After these measures taken to beef up water supply in the municipality, modalities for water connection were put in place. The modalities put in place seriously facilitated the connection of water to households though these conditions applied only to piped Quarters. To get water connected all that is needed is a hand written application addressed to the Mayor and titled “Application for Water Connection” submitted in Room 26 of the council.
Secondly, communal stamps for FCFA 1000 should be put on the application
followed by a visit from an inspection team from the Water department. This visit is to carry out inspection for the materials needed according to the distance from the mainline.

Water Projects

After estimates are made and money paid in at the cashier’s desk, the
connection is done within 24 hours if the customer is ready to excavate.
Excavation is not done by the water team but by the customer.

The next community development initiative of Fongu Cletus is the partnership between the council and the Livestock and Fisheries Development Project North West Region. This partnership is described on the council’s facebook platform in the following manner:

“ The Bamenda III Council in partnership with the Livestock and Fisheries Development project North West Region(LIFIDEP),have carried out an educative and sensitization campaign aimed at providing financial assistance to farmers involved in livestock and fisheries. With an objective to contribute to increase rural income and living standard through increase productivity and production, LIFIDEP has launched microcredit loan scheme to enable livestock farmers to improve on their productivity.
This assistance will be timely and highly competitive and the criteria is a follows
• For small scale and resource limited farmers, the client must have received training and capacity building from LIFIDEP, and should equally operate an account with the selected Microfinance Institution.
• For medium and large farmers, clients must have been in business for at least 6 months, operate at a profit and have some inventory in stock and should equally operate an account with the selected MFI.( which is United savings and Agricultural Credit limited (USA-Credit Union Ltd) Bamenda and , Nsanimunwi Cooperative Credit Union Bafut)

Water Tank Being constructed in Bamenda III

 
• Have a clear simple business plan
• The president of the cooperative or the quarter head must be a “moral guarantor” for each client, vouching for his or her business acumen, character, integrity and commitment to honoring the terms of the contact.
• Age of beneficiaries range from 18 years to 75 years….”

Next, the Bamenda III Council under Fongu Cletus donated Material, Financial and Moral support to Internally Displaced persons IDPs from Momo Division (Batibo) and Manyu Division (Kendem) resident at Ma Camp David’s home at Mile III Nkwen, on June 21,2018. Some of the items included, Rice, Mattresses, Blankets, Salts, Oil, Cloths and a Cash Sum of 50000Frs to purchase cloths for the IDPs.

With these community development strides, other development stakeholders started developing interest in working in partnership with the Bamenda III Council. A case in point is the interest shown in the activities of the council by Jude Nforngang, proprietor of Telefree Digital Network Systems & Services. He states his interest in working in partnership with the council in the following manner:

“I have read your comments here and it appears all your troubles center around Fraud, Cost and Time. I will be very happy to provide a digital system to Bamenda III to automate the registration of birth right from the Martenity where delivery is done and the council can print out the birth certificate of the children automatically in a mater of a mouse click and fitting paper into a printer, print and hand over to the mayor to sign. This system is ready and you do not need to install any computers. Let me know if you need my help on this. You can contact me from company website http://www.mytelefree.com God bless as you take a new turn to be fraud free as I help you go digital.”

Earlier on in 2018 in a briefing with Fongu Cletus, the Lord Mayor had predicted a positive 2018. Taking a retrospective look at 2017 he said “I think 2017 was a very interesting year as far as the Bamenda III Council is concerned even though a number of challenges came up. A lot was done this year and we have been able to realise some road projects within the municipality and provide water to the population. We have equally been able to assist some areas in the provision of electricity and other social projects. We have equally built bridges, culverts, classrooms and provided assistance to people with special needs.

The Lord Mayor said these projects were realised thanks to the commitment of the municipal councilors, the population and stakeholders in the process of development. He said they would have loved to achieve more but due to the socio political crises affecting certain Regions of the country they could not do more. “These crises have affected us adversely and this is because the population during this period did not pay its taxes” he said.

Fongu Cletus has recently participated in Sister cities international conference the most recent being that which took place in Colorado, USA, 2018.

The Bamenda III Council now has a newly updated website where you can catch up with recent news, on projects, partners, and more. www.bamenda3council.org/.

Email:edevnewspaper@gmail.com/francoeko@gmail.com/Tel:+237696896001/+237678401408/+237667169106

Mbombo Abel Chenyi The Accountant, Banker and Community Developer

   

Mbombo Abel Chenyi

 

Mbombo Abel Chenyi, Lord Mayor of Ndop Council is an Accountant by profession. A Chattered Accountant trained in London. He worked as a Banker and went on retirement when he was the Assistant General Manager of Union Bank in Cameroon. He also worked with Cooperatives and worked with 40.000 farmers for a period of 27 years working with them on how to manage their savings with Cooperative Credit Unions. He eventually went into politics. Let’s however listen to Mbombo Abel Chenyi to get an insight of the Community Developer. This interview takes us through the educational training of Mbombo Abel Chenyi, His vision and development initiatives as a community developer as well as his present initiatives. He begins by telling us about his studies in England. He was interviewed by Francis Ekongang Nzante; Publisher of Cameroon People and Edev Newspaper.

“I studied at the South West London College and from there I went to Tutors College where Accountancy is done. I was later awarded a Chartered Accountant certificate in 1990. I was sponsored by the European Union scholarship in collaboration with North West Cooperative Association and I thank them for that. I served at the Northwest Cooperative Association as the Financial Manager. When I came back home I had to work with them for ten years which was obligatory. When the Union Bank was opened in 1990 I joined it as the auditor and rose up from there to become the Assistant General Manager and because of illness I came back home. I went to the US for treatment and I am finally strong enough to be at the post in which you find me today.

The Community Developer…..

You have worked a lot with communities assembling people at the grassroots and bringing them together which is one of the reasons we have included you in this publication. Tell us about your experience with the grassroots and how this pushed you into politics.

First, I am a product of a farmer and my fees were paid from the farm. When I was serving the Cooperative I realised that the farmers were at the low level of income in the society and knew the pains through which they passed to get money. Look at the cost of a bucket of corn today in Ndop, it is being sold at 1200FCFA but the actual cost of that corn is 3000 FCFA. I sympathized with them and looked for ways to nurse the idea. We started by developing the savings under the credit unions and we raised a lot of money. When we opened the branches of our Bank in Yaounde, Douala, Kumba and Limbe I went and planted the ideas there. My aim was to let the public know that the credit union was the base for the common man and if you save through the credit union you  become each other’s keeper. I encouraged them to do that and when I moved round, I raised over 4 Billion for the Bank. We struggled to get the Bank at this level because we realised after observing Cameroon Bank and other Banks, that the little credits of the credit unions were swept away in those banks going under. The banks collapsed and their savings were not protected so we tried to bring them together to see what could be done. Today the cost of fertilizer is always very high so we encouraged village savings and when you go to villages today you find what is locally referred to as tontins or njangis. It is a system in which they do their savings and help each other. The cooperative spirit we built was each for all and all for each. Dealing with 40.000 farmers was certainly difficult. We opened the Santa Pinyin Coffee factory and I was the first President there and worked with them up to 1980.

Ndop, the largest settled municipality in the upper Noun Valley is transforming from a rural area to an urban one thanks to the growing Economic Power of Agriculture. Can you explain how this is happening? 

Considering the low income from Coffee, maize, beans, banana, coco yams it was difficult but luckily in 1980 the government came up with what is known as UNVDA, the Upper Noun Valley Development Authority and I happened to have served there as a member of the Board.  We realised that our low level lands were very good for the production of rice. We went in and surrendered the land and it was installed. From then till today, most of our youth are not moving out of the place. The women have been stabilised since they work in these rice farms. UNVDA is pushing up with this by giving the rice to the farmers on credit. They have the Technical knowhow and that enables them to build the contours or rice rooms where rice is grown. This has stabilised the economy and reduced social tensions in these areas. The Vegetable growing activity has also greatly improved and has increased the income of the rural masses. They sell their vegetable in Douala, Yaounde, Bamenda, Kumba among many other urban areas in Cameroon. The people due to their growing incomes decided to open stores. The bikes you have in town here are savings from low income persons and it has all generated a lot of development. There is also the community development spirit which has not been left out. As President of the Bamessing Traditional Council, we incorporated all the female folks into the council and 40% of traditional councilors in Bamessing are women. These women educated other women on how to manage their homes with the little income that they had and send their children to school. It is regrettable that for two years school was interrupted but things are beginning to pick up again. The build up to school reopening is going on and I went out with the Honourable member of Parliament from school to school and we noticed that the buildup was impressive. The MP donated books and gave scholarships to some desperate children.

How have they been braving it through this crises period?

They have not been quite hurt because of the stabilised atmosphere. Ours is a municipality with a hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants and it is quite big in terms of administration. The responsibility is subdivided between the Fons, the quarter heads, the administration like the SDO, the DO, so that together we harness our efforts. With the stability built from the base you see that the people are able to build the beautiful houses that you see. They are gradually but surely moving from a rural milieu to an urban area. If you stand up at Sabga and throw your glance down this way you will see that we are growing into a city. We have one of the first modern slaughter houses that we have opened and it is among the best in the region. We think that the butchers and cattle breeders will be very happy with it. It guarantees for the hygiene of what goes into the stomach since we will be able to use that in processing our meat. Apart from the slaughter House, we have our modern market which I have been notified will take about 600 tenants. It will soon be constructed in agreement with FEICOM and they will construct some houses here to incorporate the civil servants that are transferred here. I am hoping that after Bamenda, it should be Ngoketunja that should lead development in the Nortwest Region. It will be a transit market because we hope that the Bamale-Mbouda road will be tarred soon and those going from Nkambe, Kumbo coming down will not need to go to Bamenda. There will be the possibility for people to construct very strong Warehouses. We think that sooner or later Ndop should be a city.  

Message

Things have generally been very difficult and we have also noticed that Technical schools were left out from this region apart from GTC Ombe within the Tiko Municipality. As a result everybody struggled to go to Nigeria for Technical Education meantime French speaking Cameroonians were enjoying a system with a lot of Technical schools. The authorities have now stepped in to adjust that and there are many Technical establishments today. More space has been created for our English Educational Sub system. ENAM now has been beefed up with the common Law system. For everybody who is progressive in nature, there is no life that has no hitches. If you move round in dust, you must have jiggers entering your feet and when this happens it does not mean that you should cut off the foot. Try to remove it and do so carefully before you destroy a tendon. I think we should put our heads together and stop loosing souls. 

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