The chairman of Board of Directors of the Port Authority of Douala (PAD) raised to the rank of Officer of the Cameroon National Order of Valour. Shey Jones Yembe was decorated last Tuesday October 13, 202 in Douala for his trappings towards nation building.
Performing the decoration rite on behalf of the Head of State, the Minister of Transport, Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe, placed the medal on Shey Jones’ chest on the sidelines of a ceremony to inaugurate some newly acquired nautical vessels by the PAD in Douala Tuesday October 13. The inauguration ceremony was chaired by the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute.
The visibly happy PM told the press after launching the new vessels that the machines are going to help to spur the Douala Port which also serves landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic into a real centre of activity in West and Central Africa.
The acquisition of the over FCFA 40 billion-worth ‘small ships’ by the maritime company is in line with President Paul Biya’s economic blueprint to enhance economic growth and is part of several reforms taken lately to modernise the port, generate more income and use more local human resources.
The presidential instructions to the ports are channelled through the Board that is headed by the no-nonsense Shey Jones who is endowed with a rare leadership and managerial prowess. Prior to the acquisition of the vessels, all dredging at the Port of Douala was carried out by private and especially foreign companies. But the board, headed by Shey Jones, has been frantically working on it following government policy of trying to get back their sovereignty by getting some of the things done by Cameroonians. While waiting for Cameroonians to be able to do it, the maritime firm just executed government policy by getting it done by government itself with an objective eventually to pass it over to Cameroonians businessmen, according to Shey Jones.
After a careful and methodical study, the PAD board headed by Shey Jones is said to have approved that the company goes for a commercial loan of FCFA 32 billion to purchase the vessels which are expected to generate about FCFA 15 billion surplus in operating cost annually. PAD had been spending at least FCFA 22 billion on dredging annually.
Other Trappings
The acquisition of the nautical vessels was just one of several reforms which the Douala Port has witnessed since the appointment of Shey Jones as Board chair.
PAD today has its own container terminal which is run by Cameroonians. No one could have believed that the ‘almighty’ French business giant, Bollore, could be shipped out of PAD until Shey Jones came in with instructions from the Unity Palace.
The board recently, with permission from the government, following remarkable results registered in its first six months of operation, extended the mandate of the local agency managing the container by three years beginning January next year.
In addition to the container management, the company has also built the petroleum Dolphin; a place at sea where ships transporting petroleum products dock for security reasons. Many people, who have been charmed by the board’s execution of the Head of State’s instructions relating to the modernisation of PAD, have described PAD as the driver of the country’s 2035 emergence vision.
No doubt the PM was marvelled and nodded his head at each time he listened to the Board chair, Shey Jones Yembe, and General Manager, Cyrus Ngo’o, during his tour of the maritime facility on Tuesday.
“With all the reforms in terms of security, logistics, transport, and it has been very interesting to see and I am going to report very positively to the President of the Republic that his reforms are being carried out here in Douala,” the PM promised at the end of a tour of the new installations at PAD.
A Role Model as Chairman
Shey Jones is longest-serving board chair the PAD has ever had. His trappings speak by themself. Many observers say this is because the already wealthy businessman brought in a new management style with reforms that some of his “money-minded” predecessors did not think of the moment they were appointed at the income-generating company. Ever since Shey Jones Yembe was appointed Board chairman, the Douala Port Authority has become a bee-hive of activities. Accountability and transparency has been the menu.
In other state corporations, board chairs and their managers are usually mostly at daggers drawn — in most cases because of money and overlapping of functions. This is not the case of Shey Jones who knows very well that the board is just “like a post office” through which instructions pass to management.
“The board is just a transmission, it is a passage. We pass the policy of the government, the head of state’s will, which assists government policy. We pass it to the management and the management executes. So we don’t need to meet the Head of State for that. We need to just know that this is what he wants, this is what he is telling us to do and we pass it over to management and supervise that management does it,” Shey Jones told the Press.
The man whose, watch words are transparency and accountability, knows what the text says and what the rights and obligations of a board chair and the General Manager are and thinks if all other board chairs understand, there will be no conflicts between them and their managers.
“What I have noticed in Cameroon is that 80% or 70% of Cameroonians like to do another person’s job not their job or pointing at the other person’s job without doing theirs. What we are doing here is the board members and I do what the board is supposed to do and we make sure that we give management the breathing space to do what they are supposed to do,” he continued.
Shey Jones understands that the role of the board is that of a watchdog and so does not interfere in what the manager is supposed to do. He regret that in some corporations both the chairman and the manager perform same tasks.
“All the board chairmen, I am telling you, please stop going and sitting in the corporation as if you are doing the General Manager. You are not supposed to be there every day,” the selfless Shey Jones said.
“Please also stop talking to workers, talk to your General Manager who will talk to the workers. Stop having the chairman’s people and the General Manager’s people. It is a shame that board chairmen are doing that. It is a shame and I say it with all the courage on earth, it is a shame that they should be doing that. Leave the General Managers too work and you do your work so that you can come back and sanction or put him to order and have authority over him. If you go and sit there as a General Manager then you can’t have authority over him,” he also advised his peers.
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