The Senior Divisional Officer for the Wouri last Wednesday took the much-awaited decision to suspend the activities of the dreaded 'cargo' vehicles, veritable death traps that ply the streets of Douala carrying passengers virtually abandoned to themselves in the face of no other viable urban transportation system.

Already very concerned about repeated cases of accidents and other malfeasant activities on Douala city roads, the SDO must have been particularly enraged by an incident last Tuesday evening in the Akwa neighbourhood when one of such vehicles drove carelessly into a crowd, injuring some four citizens seriously.

This certainly was the last straw that pushed the miffed public official into action, asking that all such vehicles be taken off the road within his administrative area of jurisdiction until further notice. This decision obviously appeases countless city dwellers who lose dear ones in the numerous deadly accident which occur in Douala, caused not only by the recklessness of the drivers of these buses, but also by their unreliable and rickety technical condition.

Douala city dwellers had barely forgotten  the nasty accident two weeks ago at the Kondi neighbourhood while close friends were still commiserating with relatives of the five people who died in that accident when the new incident was reported in Akwa. It was obviously to assure citizens that he means business that Mr Naseri Paul Bea, in company of the principal law-enforcement officers of the Wouri Division, personally visited many of the bus stations of sorts to apprise and appraise the situation before arriving at the life-saving initiative which certainly will go a long way in putting order in urban transportation.

After the visit, he blew a “game-over” whistle, but the entire problem is hardly laid to rest. On the contrary, decision is merely a battle won in the multi-facetted war against urban transportation; begging for the need to address the problem from a holistic approach. The “cargo” transportation system, seem within the prism of the generalized absence of a convenient system of urban transportation, could be considered as an alternative which commuters accepted in spite of themselves.

The question on many lips a day after the decision is how the tens of thousands of users of this system will now move about in Douala. The fact that the measure “suspends until further notice” leave a window of opportunity for many of the operators of this system to improve on the technical condition of their vehicles to conform to basic norms of comfort. One should therefore expect that in the coming days or weeks, given the gravity of the transportation deficit in Douala, public officials should institute clear standards for any vehicle destined for urban transportation.

Such measures could include stricter controls on the technical quality of vehicles imported to guarantee a minimum accepted condition for safety and comfort. Some of the existing buses could also be recycled to meet these basic conditions as determined by the authorities without which the suspension order may be viewed as a precipitated act which did not take into consideration the serious difficulties commuters in Douala are expected to go through in the face of the new situation.

Moreover, there is also the danger of taking these “cargo” buses out of Douala for other cities and in so doing carrying the same problems to other parts of the country. More globally, the decision of the Wouri Senior Divisional Officer provides one good occasion to revisit the nagging problem of urban transportation, not only in Douala, but across the entire national territory. The problem begs for an urgent response.