The process of degassing Lake Nyos is 90% complete and government is stepping up efforts to have it completed.
Additional funding and updated actions to speed up the work of the National Programme to secure and rehabilitate Lake Nyos was topical last week in Wum, Menchum Division. In effect, 31 years after the killer Lake Nyos, Mechum Division claimed the lives of some 1,800 people, work by the National Programme to secure and rehabilitate the Lake area for survivors to return to the land of their ancestors remains topical.
Away from the degassing process which is about 90 percent completed and the reinforcement of the retention dam which is about 70 percent completed, delays in the execution of three other major components is evident. The rehabilitation of survivors and support to the production sector has delayed alongside the sustainable management of natural resources, environmental protection and improvement of structural infrastructure. Conceived to span three years from 2008-2010, the delay has not helped matters.
It is against this backdrop that the government has charted a new way forward. Prominent on the agenda is an updated programme that was examined and validated by the Menchum Divisional crisis committee on July 11, 2017. Menchum SDO, Emvoutou Bita presided over the event after which the Director of Civil Protection, Risk prevention and management of disasters at the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Yap Mariatou told CT that the updated programme seeks to finalise the securement of Lake Nyos.
The programme features a mechanism to continue degassing the lake, through a Deep Water Solar Energy pumping system, putting in place a permanent control mechanism to monitor trends in the lake and maintain surveillance equipment. It also proposed more holistic prevention plans instead of security a perimeter around Lake Nyos.
It also features actions to prepare the return of the survivors to Nyos, rehabilitation actions which includes, land allocation operations, support to persons who decide not to return, construction of new roads, rehabilitation of existing roads, reinforcement of bridges etc. It also emerged from the event in Wum that the 2017 work plan of the National Programme to secure and rehabilitate Lake Nyos focuses on the demarcation and marking out of the security zone around Lake Nyos, support for the rehabilitation of school infrastructure, provision of inputs and agro-pastoral materials etc.Source:Cameroon Tribune
