News coming from the Ministry of Public Works about the goings on in road maintenance sector is everything but reassuring. That about 100 already awarded road maintenance contracts are in the process of being cancelled, is to say the least, disturbing.

Public authorities advance reasons for the sorry state of affairs to protracted delays in projects execution, some of which have dragged on for over seven years. Meanwhile, contractors present varied reasons for their inability to measure up to expectation. While some blame the delays on administrative bottlenecks in redefining their tasks, or disbursing funds, others say unforeseen circumstances (death of their sponsor) held them down!

From observation, the excuses appear to be flimsy. Why did the contracts first of all delay before necessitating review? How could a whole public contracts firm rests on the shoulders of an individual to a point of crumbling with his demise? How did they first of all win the contracts? Is it like Cameroon doesn’t have viable contractors who can ably compete, win and carry on projects? Was the playing field level enough to engender the much-needed competition in the selection process that would have at term produced the best bidder in terms of techniques and finances? Or the unenviable mutually-agreed emergency procedure (gré-à-gré) that is fast becoming a rule, rather than an exception, was once again left to prevail? Irritating questions whose responses still blow in the wind!

Whatever is advanced to justify delays that are pushing authorities to pull back the contracts and give them to new contractors; tenable or not, the prejudice is immeasurable. The local population who would have benefitted from the rehabilitated roads to journey out of underdevelopment and poverty are still languishing in the mishaps. The state of degradation of the earmarked rehabilitated roads is no longer the same today. They will even further deteriorate in course of the process to cancel the old contracts and attribute new ones, provided the normal public contract award procedure is respected to the letter. Worse still, the amounts initially budgeted for the projects would certainly increase given the seemingly advanced state of degradation of the stretches. It goes without saying therefore that the raison d’être of road maintenance – keeping it permanently fit for use all year round – has been defeated. Time and money have been wasted leaving the roads the same; in fact worse. 

With the damage already done, it is time to right the past wrongs if tomorrow must be better than yesterday and today. The Minister of Public Works, government’s engineer, after discussions with the defaulting contractors should already know where the shoe pinches. Road maintenance is the responsibility of so many stakeholders. It serves no purpose doing things the way they have always been done even when there is every reason to show that they have almost always hit the rocks. “If you always walk down the same path, you will go to where you have already been,” so goes a wise saying. Change is imperative now if roads must continue to be the purveyor of development here like elsewhere. Government may consider coming up with stricter measures to discourage the ‘gré-à-gré’ option in public contracts award which has unfortunately found a soft spot for corruption in our system. Not only does it defeat competition which is cost and quality-effective but the process creates avenues for people to evade the normal procedure to either satisfy friends or make more money for themselves and families at the detriment of general interests.  

More so, the infamous ‘lowest bidder takes it all’ clause needs a second reading as amateurs are known to have seduced tender committees with spicy rates only to win contracts but vanish thereafter. Worse still, inexperienced but influential contractors allegedly win contracts only to sub-contract them to others later.  Change is non-negotiable here and now is the time!