Money everywhere but gov't workers without pay!.

Anybody abreast with media reports can easily acknowledge that the Cameroon economy is doing well, despite the pangs of COVID-19 and the brutal conflicts in the North West, South West and Far North Regions.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank, AfDB and the Cameroon government, often qualify that "impressive" performance with "resilient".

Yesterday, The Guardian Post screamed how the Customs Department, led by its Director General, Fongod Edwin Nuvaga, injected the sum of 486.4 billion FCFA into the state coffers, during the first semester of 2023.

The amount recorded is well above the initial target of 470.4 billion FCFA, representing an achievement rate of 103.4%. Meanwhile, the revenue mobilised is said to be up by 19.3% in relative terms and 78.6 billion FCFA in absolute terms, compared to the 407.8 billion FCFA raised in the first half of 2022.

That justifies the bouncing back of the economy, which has also been accompanied by a plethora of loans. 

What, however, remains flabbergasting is that scores of government workers in some ministries and state corporations do not get their salaries and other fringe benefits in the midst of plenty of money and have to resort to strikes.

In recent times, workers of MATGENIE, Chantier Naval, CDC, Ministries of Secondary Education, Public Health, some hospitals and councils etc, have gone on strike for unpaid dues.

This week, the government, through the Ministries of Public Health and that of Labour and Social Security, went knees-bending to plead with workers of the National Drug Quality Control and Validation Laboratory known by its French acronym as LANACOME, to suspend their strike.

The LANACOME personnel, represented at the meeting by staff delegate, Jean Bart Ella Mba, explained later that the workers’ grievances include unpaid salaries and lack of health insurance among others.

When the ministers promised to resolved the problems, the government was given a grace period of 10 days to fulfil its pledge.

Like other state corporations in its mire, it is not the first time workers of LANACOME are going on strike. In July 2022, they took to the streets protesting over unpaid salaries. They had also taken identical actions in 2020 and 2021.

The crucial mission of LANACOME, as stipulated in a presidential decree creating it, is "among others, to control the quality of health products and medication, intended for consumption; imported or manufactured locally and for export. The facility also studies and analyses trials with a view to scrutinise products for therapeutic and cosmetic use, and any other assimilated products in human and veterinary medicine".

If workers of such a health sensitive institution are not paid regularly, will they not be tempted to take bribes and allow contaminated products to flood markets in the country?  Even if they are not lured by payola, can a person working without pay concentrate to ensure the effectiveness of quality control? Would it not be correct to say some of the fake, expired and sub-standard products reported in markets and even in health facilities, are as a result of government's neglect of its obligation to the staff of the laboratory?

LANACOME workers are just among many others that have threatened strikes or gone on protest before their grievances are addressed. Does that justify the resilience of the economy, the contained inflation and a projected growth rate of some four percent the lenders and government tell Cameroonians?

For any economy to be doing well, resilient and with a credible and transparent management, workers who are the most important factors in development should be paid as and when due with all their fringe benefits. Anything short of that to the point civil servants like teachers, nurses and other workers of state establishments like the CDC, councils, etc have to go on strike to be paid is not far from "How to Lie with Statistics". 

Darrell Huff published the classic in 1954 but it is even more relevant today in many government communication than it was at the time of writing.

The government and its sprawling corporations and agencies should set examples for the struggling private sector to emulate by paying personnel regularly.  

How many ministers, for instance, will go for one month without their salaries and bloated allowances? Yet, they are "supervisors" of establishments whose personnel are not being paid every month!

The economy may be doing well as Cameroonians are being made to believe. 

We, at The Guardian Post, have no problem with Yaounde’s propaganda about the country’s economic growth and resilient. 

All we are asking from them is to make sure these claims are illustrated by the absence of strikes or threats to go on strike. Anything short of that will only illustrate a stagnant economy or that the money coming in goes to satisfy only the very rich few at the summit of state while the rest are left in the lurch of the economy.