Muyuka council adopts 963bn as budget for 2017

By Boris Esono in Buea

Officials during budgetary session

The Muyuka council has adopted an ambitious budget of nine hundred and sixty three million five hundred thousand (963,500,000) FCFA as its budget for the year 2017. The budget witnessed an increase of one hundred and sixty three million five hundred thousand francs as compared to that of last year given a percentage increase of 20.43%, balanced in revenue and expenditure. It was adopted during the second and last ordinary council session of the council that took place on Friday 23 December 2016 in Muyuka.

                To the mayor of the Muyuka council Mr. Nkeng Michael Akamin, the revenue is to be generated from the council’s internal sources, government subsidies, PNDP, and loans from FEICOM.

                During the solemn gathering, Mayor Nkeng Michael called on the councilors to strive to harness a new value paradigm, build a society that is at peace with itself and shun the boom and burst circle that has caused so much grief in the past.

                               Recently, according to the mayor, arm banditry has taken a toll in the municipality like never before. Some days ago, a police officer was shot dead in the course of taken guard in one of the highly elevated business premises. The council building has also been burgled in two separate instances with the last very devastating with each council office ransacked.

                To him, the administration needs to put in place tough security control machineries like beefing up the police and gendarmerie services in Muyuka and Mutengene through the provision of patrol vans for immediate response to requests for help by those in need of such assistance.

                Another issue of great importance that the mayor dwelled on was the aspect of education that has been stalled for close to a month now.

"The current strike action by common law lawyers and Anglophone teachers’ trade unions has paralyzed the normal functioning of schools in the municipality. In trying to look for solutions, the council in collaboration with the DO for Muyuka convened a meeting on 23 November 2016 with those concerned. Though this could not bring an end to the strike, it at least contributed to the relative peace that reigns here at the moment," Mayor Nkeng Michael said. 

                On his part, the SDO for Fako, Mr. Zang III enjoined all the councilors to give their full support to the mayor in his strides to give a facelift to the municipality. He however advised the mayor to stop wasting council resources in the purchase of new vehicles, arguing that such resources should be used instead to repair abandoned vehicles and for long lasting development projects.

                In his closing remark, Mayor Nkeng Michael noted that 2016 has been a very challenging year even though the municipality managed to register many successes.

                He said for instance that the municipality played a significant role in mobilizing support for the just ended Female AFCON; construct a municipal mortuary which went operational in October amongst others.

The council session was attended amongst others by top personalities such as the DO for Muyuka, the MP for Fako East constituency, traditional authorities and councilors.