Final Solution…Obligatory!

The construction of the Memve'ele Hydroelectric Dam has opened an important page in electricity supply in the country. With an installed capacity of 211MW, the plant is expected to revolutionize the South Interconnected grid which has so far been marked by a medley of problems, shortage in supply and constant electricity cuts with their consequences on the socio-economic life of the population. This state of affairs has left no one indifferent as government continues to grapple with measures to bring a lasting solution to it. Memve'ele was created to solve a problem and efforts must be made to prevent it from rather becoming another problem. The construction of transmission line from Nyabizan to Yaounde remains one, if not, the main speed break in taking the project to its logical end. It is for this reason that authorities of the Electricity Development Corporation (EDC) went down to the field to dialogue with the local population.
The issue at stake remains the compensation of the population to be displaced as a result of the construction of the transmission line. In effect, those to be affected complain they haven’t been paid and as such are not ready to quit. Why they haven’t been paid up to this moment is another issue. What is regrettable is the fact that this whole issue of compensating the population has become recurrent and a serious threat to several development projects in Cameroon. The peculiarity with the Memve’ele Hydroelectric Project remains the unpredictability at the level of its conception. The question on many lips is how such a project as important as Memeve’ele could have been conceived completely ignoring the fact that power to be produce...