Public Works Minister, Patrice Amba Salla, visited the site yesterday April 2.

Work is intensifying on the tarring of the Nkol’Afamba-Dzeng road in Mefou and Afamba Division of the Centre Region and the contractors say everything being equal, the first phase of the 10.5-km project will be complete by April 25 this year.

According to Neba Forchingong Emmanuel, the Project Manager of Carboncor Road Products and Sealants, the contractors, over 7.2 km of the 10.5-km first phase is already done. The first phase is to cost over FCFA 973 million. He gave the assurance on Monday April 2 during an appraisal visit to the construction site by the Minister of Public Works, Patrice Amba Salla. The Minister and his team visited the already tarred portion and also inspected ongoing construction work, asking questions and getting clarifications from the contractors.

The novelty about the road is the use of new technology from South Africa known as “Carboncor All-road Surfacing” which consists in employing intensive manual labour to do surface dressing tarring. Experts say this is faster and cost-effective than what Cameroon is used to.

According to Befere Godlove Ajah, a civil engineer with the Civil Engineering Laboratory (Labogenie) who was on the Minister’s delegation, government has decided to test new products in the tarring of roads. “Carboncor All-road Surfacing is a product from South Africa which is for now used mostly in the tarring of rural roads with low traffic. The Nkol’Afamba-Dzeng road experiment could be extended to other earth and rural roads if proven successful. At the end of the experimental phase, if the conclusions are positive, then it will boost other projects and employment, given that it is manual and employs many people. It is also going to reduce the cost of tarring roads and the amount of money spent every year in maintaining earth roads,” Mr Ajah said. The road using the technology, he explained, can last up to ten years, depending on the way the project was realised.

Visibly satisfied, the Minister said road construction constitutes one of the priorities of government and the South African experience is to see how earth and rural roads could be well developed with limited resources. The Minister expressed hope that with the new technology, inaccessibility would be a thing of the past and socio-economic development in rural areas will receive a boost. In song and dance, local people expressed gratitude to government for the project, stating that life would no longer be the same for them.