North West : Councils Battle To Provide Better Services

Besides championing local development activities, local councils have as other key missions to provide diverse services to users and the local population. Some of the services include the issuance of civil status documents such as birth and marriage certificates as well as certificates of death. They equally have to provide market spaces to traders, hygiene and sanitary services and ensure that the local population have what it takes to improve on their living conditions and general development.

Local councils in the North West Region are staggering in their efforts to provide the required services to uses and the beneficiary population. The ongoing socio-political and security crisis that have been rocking the North West and South West Regions since 2016 have made most of the councils in the hinterlands of the region to relocate their offices to safer zones, especially the regional capital Bamenda. Here, each Mayor struggle to use any possible means to foster development back in his or her council area as well as ensure that the population benefits from the services that are incumbent on the councils.

Either on their places of refuge or in the original council premises, they have been trying to issue birth and marriage certificates and also certificates of death. Many of the mayors following the 2023 Annual Report of the Office of the Public Independent Conciliator for the North West Region have been struggling to satisfy the population despite the morose security context.

The efforts notwithstanding, many malpractices and unorthodox practices related to service delivery have to be combated. The findings of ...