Water Catchment Managers In Buea Municipality Learn Fresh Skills

/By Macdonald Ayang Okumb/

     Managers of water catchment areas, together with tree nursery attendants within the municipality of Buea, recently learnt new skills in their business when they attended a two-day workshop in Buea.

     Over 50 of the water catchment managers and tree nursery attendants answered present at the workshop that was organised by a Buea-based Non-governmental Organisation known as Sustainable Development Initiative Group, SUDEVIN.

Workshop Participants With Some Donated Equipment

     In addition to the skills the workshop attendees gathered, SUDEVIN at the end of it all, handed tree nursery materials to them. The items included spades, wheelbarrows, pick axes, cutlasses, files, watering cans, measuring tapes as well as thermoplastic bags (polythene bags).

     Addressing the trainees at the end of the training, the coordinator of SUDEVIN Group and project coordinator for the protection of water catchments in the Buea Municipality, William Mumbe Lyonga, stressed the usefulness of protecting water catchments. He stated that the workshop was just one in a litany of other activities listed in the project.

     He gave to understanding that the project on protecting water catchments in the municipality can be traced back to 28 April 2015 when the Australian High Commissioner to Cameroon but who works from the Nigerian capital Abuja, Jonathan Richardson, personally launched the project’s activities at the Buea council main conference hall.

     Hear Lyonga Mumbe: “…the project team had held sensitisation meetings with cluster communities to discuss on the importance to protect water catchments. …After the launching, the project team visited water catchments in the Buea municipality. The project earmarked ten catchments, but after this visits, the project team identified over ten catchments which needed to be protected. Buea municipality has over 20 water sources but this project focuses on 10 of these sources which is quite remarkable for a start and thus paves a gateway for public-private partnership between SUDEVIN and the Buea council on watershed management in the Buea Municipality”.

     For catchments that need urgent attention, Lyonga revealed that trees will be planted as the project unfolds. He explained how: “We need to improve them by mapping, fencing, planting of trees and restricting human activities in these areas. This is why this training has been organised to training of catchment managers and tree nursery attendants…”

     The representative of the Divisional Officer for Buea who officially closed the workshop praised the organisers for the initiative she said it was timely given the incessant water woes rocking the Buea municipality. She thus, appealed to the participants to quickly put the new skills and ideas they have gained to good use.

     The workshop venue was the conference hall of the South West Regional Delegation of Agriculture and Rural Development.