Public service recruitment: Minister Joseph Le warns candidates against fraudsters passing for middlemen.

He sounded the warning during a press briefing in Yaounde on Wednesday June 21. He used the outing to announce that 2,235 youth will be recruited into the public service in the 2023 financial year and an additional 450 professionals hoping to have career upgrades.

According to Minister Le, the examinations and other processes involved in the recruitment exercise will be extremely rigorous and transparent with no room for any manipulations.

“I urge you to be more vigilant, so as not to give in, to merchants of illusion who vainly promise you success in exchange for money. It's a pure scam, so don't give in, to them. You can even denounce them, by contacting MINFOPRA's anti-corruption unit,” the minister cautioned, promising that the exercise will not give room for any form of wrongdoing.

He equally warned that candidates with fraudulent files will be highly sanctioned and disqualified even if their errors or wrongdoings are discovered at the end of the recruitment exercise.

“…carefully read the orders announcing the competitive examinations you are applying for. Make sure you are qualified, so as to avoid any unpleasant surprise. Any application that fails to meet the eligibility criteria will be rejected outright,” the minister warned, while calling on the applicants to be law abiding and make good use of the opportunity offered them by the Head of State, in his goal to curb unemployment.

Breakdown of 2023 recruitment exercise

According to Minister Joseph Le, a total of 2,685 persons will be employed this year. He said 2,235 will be new recruits while 450 will be professionals aiming to either upgrade their categories or switch. 

He said there will be a total of 2, 135 routine recruitments with a total of 1, 120 to be done in the fields of agriculture, rural engineering, mining and geology, industrial technics, animal industries and other fields.

Le said there will be 300 openings, excluding ENAM, for the recruitment of civil servants through institutions like the National Institute of Youth and Sports, INJS, and CENAJES. 

He also announced that 275 persons will be recruited as student civil servants through the mainstream sections of ENAM and 60 for special recruitment of legal probationers and student court registrars for Common Law section of ENAM.

The member of government said there will be openings for of State employees governed by the Labour Code by means of selection tests notably environmentalists, executive secretaries, midwives and technical and vocational grade one teachers as well as 100 places for the special recruitment of translators and senior translators-interpreters, for which the final results were released last June 07.

Internal exams return for first time in four years

He said the recruitment of professionals will be conducted for the first time since 2019.  The process, he said, will concern mainly those aiming to upgrade their categories in the same field of work. 

The lone field to have professionals seating in for examinations into new field will be those in General Administration specifically in senior executive officers from category B2 of the public service.

He however clarified that besides the upgrades through examinations, other normal career upgrades will be done “in accordance with the conditions laid down by the General Rules and Regulations of the Public Service and special or specific rules and regulations”.

Digitalisation, increase in registration fees 

Minister Le also announced that registration fees for examinations as announced by the Ministry of Finance, will be increased from 15, 000 to 20,000 FCFA for category A, B, C and D exams with parts of the examinations to be coordinated digitally.