One of the Senators for Fako Division, Lionel Papinatu Fonderson, made a stern intervention in the Upper House of Parliament recently, questioning the government for delaying promises of rehabilitating the Tiko Airport and constructing the Limbe Deep Seaport.
Both projects have stalled despite the government’s high-handed promises of constructing them to improve trade and transportation in the Division.
“Time immemorial, even those who were representing our people before us, they have been clamouring for these particular projects,” Senator Fonderson said in a Parliamentary intervention.
He continued: “And the Head of State has actually granted them. But why are they not taking off, is the cry and plea of our people. Every day, they make a mockery of us. Whenever we attend all sorts of political rallies and stuffs, the first question is, ‘when is the deep seaport starting, when is the Tiko Airport starting’?”
PROMISED SINCE 1983
The Limbe Deep Seaport, whose construction was promised by President Paul Biya in 1983, has not kicked off over 40 years later.
But the sweet-talking government has kept dribbling the Fako population with yearly assurances and promises. The seaport, which could create some 20,000 permanent and temporary jobs, is estimated to cost FCFA 400 billion.
“When we were young we had even seen people, people who came to start work on this seaport. We don’t know so it looks like it’s a game that they are playing to us and to our people. Please we want that it should be clear,” Senator Fonderson frowned, urging the government to include the projects in next year’s planning.
The same fate appears to have befallen the Tiko Airport, a once vibrant airstrip, which has been dormant for several years now.
The government raised a lot of dust by sending a delegation in June 2023 headed by the South West Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai, accompanied by James Meyo, who represented the General Manager of the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority, to assess the project.
The delegation disqualified the site of the present airstrip for lack of space and a good terrain to host big aircrafts.
A new 1,000-hectare piece of land was chosen at Misselele, still in Tiko Subdivision, to construct a new facility that meets international standards.
The rehabilitation mission was dispatched after President Paul Biya announced the rehabilitation of the Tiko Airport in his New Year speech on December 31, 2022.
Aside from just promising that work was going to start immediately, the government also sent a contractor to carry on with the construction.
But over one year since the rehabilitation committee visited the site, the government has gone mute.
