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In Cameroon, most of the drinking water systems built in the 1980s by the State are no longer running, due to neglect and the lack of skilled persons to service them. With the backing of Enfants du Ndé, a Paris nonprofit organisation of the Cameroon diaspora, a new program is being launched in the country's Western province, Bangangté (150 000 people in 11 villages) to rehabilitate these installations, train technicians to service them, and counsel the supply service management committees.
The ultimate aim is to build up a local contracting authority for water and wastewater services.
A similar project has already been tried out successfully in Bangoua, one of the villages in the commune of Bangangté. In 2006, Enfants du Ndé asked the Veolia Environnement Foundation to be its main partner in the project, as technical expert and co-funder.
Other international outreach backers (water agency, water board, communes) also joined in. After working steadily for four years alongside the local authorities, the results are impressive, four water towers of the village have been rehabilitated, and the supply service renovated; at the end of 2009, 150 subscribers consumed an average of 15 liters of water per day per person.
In addition to the drinking water facilities, a sanitary block (toilets, showers, wash-houses) has been built in a market attracting 5000 people weekly. A management committee handles the water tapping and distribution. In terms of public health, water related diseases have dropped by 41%. This project involved a total of 166 days of fieldwork (diagnosis, operations, counselling, assessment) and mobilized six Veoliaforce volunteers.
Setting up a local contracting authority for water and wastewater services
Buoyed by these successes, the Bangangté town hall asked the Veolia Environnement Foundation to repeat this operation for all the villages of the commune of Bangangté, which all have water towers and networks that are either damaged or out of order. 150,000 inhabitants of Bangangté could be supplied by these installations. In each village, this means reconditioning the facilities and providing technical, accounting and financial counselling to the management committees. Seven drinking water networks will be rehabilitated - involving twenty boreholes, twelve water towers, and over two hundred standpipes - fifteen sanitary blocks will be built. To maintain the quality of the water supplied, analyses will be performed frequently and studies will be conducted to assess the risks of pollution of the springs.Pricing for the water service will be determined in accordance with the national strategy. To create a permanent maintenance and upkeep system, local repairmen will be trained and the management structures reinforced. The project also includes an educational side, as the local population will be trained on how to upkeep the sanitary blocks and good hygienen.
The estimated budget of €1,300,000 is shared among several partners, including the Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF), the commune of Bangangté, the Agence de l'Eau Seine Normandie (AESN), the Syndicat Interdépartemental pour l'Assainissement de l'Agglomération Parisienne (SIAAP) and the Veolia Environnement Foundation (which is granting €350,000 in over three years, including €50,000 allocated to volunteering skills).
This program aims to be exemplary for the whole of Cameroon: it therefore currently benefits eleven villages among the three hundred and fifty spread across the country which have similar dilapidated installations. To remedy the lack of governance, the aim is to set up a local contracting authority for water and wastewater services, by creating a framework for joint action between all the management committees, support of the technical services of the commune, and the implementation of a "water and wastewater services" strategy. The political context is favorable, because the growing decentralization process in Cameroon is involving more communes in water management and wastewater services.
