Soldiers from Bamenda, in the English-speaking region of North-West Cameroon, are picking up garbage to deal with the alleged separatists' destruction of material from the company that is normally in charge of this task, AFP witnesses said Tuesday.
Hysacam, a company that specializes in garbage collection, suspended its activities in Bamenda on February 1, following the destruction of dump trucks and other facilities by armed men, suspected Anglophone separatists.
Since then, garbage accumulates in the city, to which anxious inhabitants put fire, causing fires and toxic fumes.
Faced with this situation, soldiers and firefighters were deployed in Bamenda neighborhoods to replace the garbage collectors.
"We could not wait any longer, we could not continue to see people suffer from the situation," General Robinson Agha, commander of the 5th Bamenda-based military region, told the local press.
"Not only is it a threat to health, but even more so for safety," he added.
According to Judith Yengou, a city shopkeeper, "even the food we sell here is not good because of the smell of garbage, it is not hygienic".
At the end of 2017, after a year of protest, English-speaking separatists took up arms against Yaoundé.
Since then, the English-speaking regions of North West and South West are the scene of a violent armed conflict.
Fighting regularly opposes the army, deployed in number, to scattered groups of armed separatists who, hidden in the rainforest, attack gendarmeries, schools and other symbols of the state, multiply kidnappings.
More than 200 members of the Cameroonian Defense and Security Forces have lost their lives in this conflict, as well as more than 500 civilians, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).
According to the UN, 437,000 people were further displaced by the conflict in the English-speaking regions, and more than 32,000 people fled to neighboring Nigeria.
Source: AFP