The mayors from four regions burnt their midnight oil at CEFAM Buea.

Some 50 Mayors from the Adamawa, Far North, West and South West Regions of Cameroon are back to their respective localities after an intensive two-week training at the Buea-based Local Government Training Centre, CEFAM. The training, which ended on Friday, September 12, 2014, was centred on participative management and mobilisation of resources for effective development.

Awarding attestations to participants in the CEFAM Hall, the Director, Mathieu Hagbe, rejoiced at the fact that the session offered an opportunity for his institution to fulfill another responsibility which is to train Mayors in addition to Council staff. Hagbe was delighted that the Mayors were highly interested and devoted during the workshop.

The participants, through Aboko Patrick, Mayor of Kombo Abedimo in Bakassi, Ndian Division of the South West Region, commended the National Community-driven Participatory Programme (PNDP) and CEFAM for offering such a ground-breaking opportunity for Mayors to learn more about developing their councils. “As politicians, we do not have any specialised training for the tasks we carry out and therefore need constant interaction and refresher courses to continue to be useful development agents for our various councils,” one of the Mayors confided to Cameroon Tribune.

After the Buea exercise, the various Mayors can now hasten development in their localities by paying closer attention to their people, identifying priority needs, building unanimity among their electorate and most especially, sourcing local and external funds to sponsor development needs.

As announced by the South West Coordinator of the PNDP, Dr. Nkem David, during previous seminars involving Council staff at CEFAM, training has been designed for staff and authorities of local governments from all the 10 Regions of Cameroon. The aim is to quicken the pace of the decentralisation process since it began close to a decade ago.