Assessment of Degradations/Defects and Maintenance of Administrative Primary and Secondary School Buildings of the City of Bafoussam, Cameroon

David Vom Tahi Onana ,Blaise Ngwem Bayiha ,Didier Fokwa ,Robert Nzengwa

doi:10.7176/cer/12-6-03

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a survey on assessment of degradations/defects and maintenance of administrative primary and secondary school buildings of the city of Bafoussam, Cameroon. Data were collected with the use of structured questionnaires as shown in appendix II administered on various managers of public primary and secondary schools in the three districts of Bafoussam namely, Bafoussam I, Bafoussam II and Bafoussam III. Data were analysed with basic descriptive tools such as percentage. The results showed that the primary schools buildings in the city of Bafoussam are more degraded than those of secondary schools as an example 98% of primary school buildings in the city of Bafoussam show an aging of the paint on the walls, i.e. 127 buildings, while those of secondary school buildings show 86% i.e. 157 buildings. 85% of primary school buildings in the city of Bafoussam have a ceiling in poor condition i.e. 111 buildings, while those of secondary schools buildings have 76% i.e. 132 buildings. The secondary school buildings in the city of Bafoussam have undergone more maintenance works than those of primary schools. Keywords: Degradations/defects, Maintenance, Primary school buildings, Secondary school buildings, Bafoussam DOI: 10.7176/CER/12-6-03 Publication date: June 30 th 2020

Highlights

Since ancient times, housing has always been at the center of human concerns
This paper was aimed at assessing the degradations/defects and maintenance of administrative primary and secondary school buildings of the city of Bafoussam, Cameroon
Research methodology This work consisted in making an inventory of the administrative school buildings of the city of Bafoussam, in identifying and quantifying all the degradations or defects present in each building, and in all the buildings, to bring out the problems related to their operation or their physical aspect and to assess the maintenance work undertaken on these buildings

Summary

Introduction

Since ancient times, housing has always been at the center of human concerns. Administrative buildings represent an important part of the heritage of a state, they are the workplace of its personnel performing administrative tasks. Well planned maintenance will first protect long-term assets whilst save revenue because the costs of emergency repair of a failure exceed those of well planned maintenance. In the cases of our school buildings in particular those of the city of Bafoussam suffer from a real maintenance problem. This is how we can observe facades covered with mold, cracked walls, torn sheets, poor condition of the coating on the walls, poor condition of the paint, cracking with peeling of the concrete on the elements of structures such as columns, beams, slabs etc. According to Perret (1999), building maintenance work requires skills in the use of technical equipment and adequate maintenance make buildings last longer (Olubi and Adewolu, 2018)

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