The Minister of State Property and Land Tenure, Jean-Baptist Beleoken yesterday December 29 in Yaounde officially laid the foundation or reference pillar of a land survey project that the government intends to carry out in the next six years. The project, sources say, will significantly solve land boundary disputes in the country.
Standing in for Prime Minister Philemon Yang, Minister Jean-Baptist Beleoken said the laying of foundation pillar of the first ever project in the country was part of government’s initiative to efficiently map out State and individual land so as to avoid perennial land disputes. Mr Beleoken added that the process will not only modernise and ameliorate the business climate in the country, foster peace amongst individuals and communities, but will also improve access to state property. “It will permit international boundaries, administrative borders, State and individual land to be determined, mapped and well surveyed,” Beleoken said.
Reports from the Ministry of State Property and Land Tenure indicate that presently, all land survey plans established in Cameron do not meet international standards; reason for the recurrent double mapping, land encroachments and other land disputes. This is the raison d’être of the putting in place of the National Reference Geodetic Network, NRDN, for effective monitoring. The pilot phase is due to begin in 2011 in the towns of Yaounde, Douala, Garoua and Maroua.
The NRDN is a set of points that will cover the national territory and are distributed in a given order known as geographic, surveying, plane and altimetry coordinates. This network of triangles measured by techniques of terrestrial surveying or by satellite geodesy, forms geodetic points and serves as basis for mapping out land plans. The general objective of the project to be carried out with the aid of the Global Positioning System, GPS, reports from the Ministry of State Property and Land Tenure say, is to ensure the integrity of the national territory. It also seeks to endow the country with an internationally recognized and approved reference geodetic network with a view to setting up a reliable national numeric land surveying.
The project will be implemented in the 10 regions of the country right to the hinterlands and will span six years. A total of FCFA 12 billion will be spent on the project that will cover 378 council areas.
