As we said in our Monday edition, the Divisional Officer for Yaounde1V,Yanpen Ousmanou last Saturday expelled commercial vehicle drivers from the area around the police post at the Mvanneighbourhood in Yaounde as part of the effort to bring back order in the city’s precincts.

Yaounde and, infact, several other Cameroonian cities have lost their fame of yore because of growing urban disorder which has forced the authorities to initiate a battle of sorts with all those known to be promoting such disorder. They include itinerant salespeople generally referred to as hawkers or “sauveteurs”, market women and men who display their wares on just any available space, makeshift restaurants many of which are installed on sidewalks, irresponsible parking of vehiclesin urban agglomerations, building of homes without regard for town planning regulations etc.

The disorderly commercial vehicle drivers of Mvan have been dispersed; but no one knows for sure where they have definitively settled. The fear is that they will surreptitiously reappear in another location in town to begin another vicious cycle that looks like a hide-and-seek game between the public authorities and all those promoting urban disorder. For, all too often, acts such as those by MrOusmanou have hardly lasted beyond the media effect they create. One should not be surprised that in a couple of days, the same D.O is seen grappling with a similar problem in another location where these expelled people have decided to set up shop.

The constant failure to find a lasting solution to the numerous forms of urban disorder ought to inspire some new reasoning in the strategies to fight the ill because these repeated expulsions have shown their limits. Fireside talks have proven effective and the recent settlement of the dispute in the Mokolo market where traders and municipal council authorities sat down the exchange views leading to a settlement of their misunderstanding is a reference case which ought to be copied for effective solutions in the future.

Many of those busting laws are known to be new settlers coming in from the rural areas in search of better life. They are hardly informed of the exigencies of city life, so they transpose the habits of the rural area into an urban setting, thus creating the disorder we know of today. It is therefore the duty of the authorities to sit these people down for counseling on the exigencies of urban life rather than carrying out sporadic raids which leave the impression of animosity against a specific group.

These people must be told in the mildest and kindest words that there is a price to pay for the modern life they all aspire to. And the price to pay here has to do with orderly car parks, well-built markets, clean streets free of hawkers and sidewalk obstructions among many others.