Interview: “We Have Kept On Fighting To Re-establish Order”

Which are the hazardous areas in the Buea Municipality?
Buea, by its very nature, is situated on the slopes of Mount Cameroon which is an active volcanic mountain and that by itself makes the city prone to natural risks factors. At the same time, Buea equally has so many hills on which people are not supposed to construct. But as you can remember, last year, we equally suffered from floods and it was extremely dangerous because it was flash floods. So, we suffer from different types of risk; hills, waterways and wetlands. As such, I am going to say in the affirmative, that there are risky areas in the Buea municipality.
 

How serious is the problem of people constructing in wetlands and slopes in Buea?
It is quite a disturbing issue and very serious because when we grew up, we had areas that we knew that people should not and did not construct on. I take the example of what is referred to as the signal hill around the Bokwango area. Today, people are building on the hill. Digging the hill can lead to landslide. This again, we witnessed at the Buea Town area. The road from the Buea Town slaughter house going to the Buea Town Central market wherein last year, there was a major landslide. This is because people have been building on that hill even though we have educated them not to build on such risky areas.

Now, keeping the hilly areas aside and the landslide phenomenon, you will recall that in Buea last year, during the flash floods, the waters that ran down from the mountain, the consequences were quite serious. Vehicles were carried away like a tsunami. At the same time, human lives were lost and a loss of property destroyed. The vexing issue is that we keep sensitizing the public not to construct houses in such areas. We carry out these measures but some people have decided to go and swim against the waves of legality.

So they come over the weekends and construct. You don’t see them constructing during the week. They ...