In an unprecedented outing, the mayor of the city says he explained to the Prime Minister that the sanitation of the capital requires the mobilisation of at least 16 billion FCFA each year.
Reputed to be silent, the mayor of the city of Yaoundรฉ, Luc Messi Atangana, came out of his reserve yesterday, March 20 to speak publicly on the endless garbage crisis which strikes the political capital of Cameroon and which has reached a critical threshold since the beginning of 2025. On his Facebook account, the councilor writes without batting an eyelid to have, during the meeting of February 25 convened by the Prime Minister, 7 municipalities of the capital’sย city, in addition to the Ministers of Finance and Housing and Urban Development, explained that the current situation is due to two main reasons: the non-renewal of the contract of the HYSACAM company expired since December 31, 2023 and the under-financing of collection and waste disposal activities. “The fault of the harassment of the recruitment procedures for operators managed by other structures,” asserts Luc Messi Atangana.
Indeed, if HYSACAM, the historic partner of the State and decentralised local authorities in the collection of household waste finally signed his contract “a few days ago”, more precisely last February according to our information, in particular on lots 1, 2 and 3 which cover the subdivisions of Yaounde 1, Yaoundรฉ 2, Yaounde 4, offers launched at the end of last year by the mayor of the city for the contractualization of lot 4 which covers the Yaounde 3 and Yaoundรฉ 6 Subdivisions and which constitutes the epicentre of this garbage crisis, has been declared unsuccessful. And, for unknown reasons, the procedure is slow to be relaunched. The Yaounde City Council and the Ministry of Public Contracts refer to the fault. The first entity is suspected of having torpedoed the recruitment procedure for the company with Lot 4 for problems, with the aim of reaching an over -the -counter market for the benefit of the operator Tychlof Sarl, a company recruited at the raised foot approximately three years ago as part of the first hygiene and health emergency plan set up to clean up Yaoundรฉ.
The Ministry of Public Contracts has openly opposed such a choice which, according to him, would sprain the law. This administration would be supported in his opposition by the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Cรฉlestine Ketcha Courtรจs, who clearly made a finding of failure of the operator Tychlof. “This service provider does not have material and technical resources to be able to give the expected results,” said the minister on July 18, 2024. The other blockage that said to mention the mayor of the city in his release on Thursday said although having signed his new contract, HYSACAM still has Not received the service order of the Yaounde City Council to launch the implementation of the said contract. The operator says he understands nothing about “this new obstruction manลuvre” which borders on “minimum service as a citizen company”.ย ย
Moreover, on the second major cause of unsanitary conditions in the capital, namely the deficit in funding, the mayor of the city makes his own conclusions of the World Bank, according to which must be mobilized at least 16 billion FCFA per year for Yaoundรฉ to be clean. “However, what the State, which pays the invoice up to 85% and the urban community, which supports the remaining 15%, put together barely half of the needs”. Size clarification: the new contract of the company Hysacam represents a market of 45 billion FCFA and is spread over 5 years. Calculate in hand, this represents 9 billion FCFA per year, almost half of the annual needs. Luc Maglore Atangama says clearly โthe specifications of operators are defined according to the resources available. Consequence: while Yaounde city produces around 3000 tonnes of garbage per day, the contract provides for the removal of around 1600 tonnes โ. Clearly, the question of volumes will have to be taken into account in the new emergency plan whose Prime Minister has been instructing the implementation in Huita since February 25, and which is still not on his table.
