Funerary Stele erected 6 years after Eseka train disaster
Victims of October 21, 2016, Eseka railway disaster will forever be remembered through a Stele that has been erected at the disaster site. The stele in memory of the 76 victims, was inaugurated on Friday, December 16, 2022, in a ceremony chaired by the Minister of Transport, Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe, representing President Paul Biya.
Construction works on the funerary Stele began in 2018 but encountered several interruptions, the Minister explained. The structure covers a surface area of 3 000 metres square nearby the Eseka railway station. The 18m tall structure contains a concrete-made block that represents a passenger car embedded in a clump with an overview of a railway area surrounded by four big pillars.
According to the technical director of the project, the embedded car symbolizes the October 21, 2016 passenger train that left Yaoundé for Douala that fateful day.
” it represents the passenger train that left Yaoundé, heading to Douala that unfortunately ended its course here in Eseka because the rail changed its direction by rising towards the sky, resulting in the death of some passengers, leaving their loved ones and the whole nation traumatized” declared the technical director.
The four pillars represent the four corners of Cameroon that are tears for the 76 deaths whose names have been written on the monument.
The monument also has an administrative and health block, a water supply borehole for the local population, and a photovoltaic plant for autonomous energy supply.
The Eseka train accident occurred when a Camrail inter-city passenger train traveling from Yaoundé to Douala, derailed at Eseka, leading to 76 deaths and over 500 injured. The railway disaster remains the deadliest rail accident on the African continent since the August 2007 Benaleka train accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo that killed over 100 people.
