PAMOL GM blames aging boilers for salary crisis.

Field workers of the company have received wages up to and including February 2026, leaving them owed for March and April, a two-month shortfall. 

Meanwhile, management staff, including the General Manager, have been paid only through January 2026, placing them on three months in arrears owed: February, March, and April, 2026. 

Mbile Tapea Solomon made the revelation on Saturday May 16, 2026, at the company’s makeshift head office in Limbe, during a press briefing. 

In a measured but emphatic tone, the GM acknowledged that the company has fallen into salary arrears for the first time in five years. He however insisted that the cause is structural and infrastructural, not financial recklessness or administrative failure. 

“We owe it to our workers, to the government and to the public to be transparent,” he stated. 

The purpose of the briefing, he said, was to ‘set the records straight’ against social media posts that have exaggerated the crisis, mischaracterised the company’s finances, and in some cases alleged malfeasance.

A production data presented by management traced a pattern of slow but steady recovery between 2021 and 2024, when output reached a five-year peak of 3,692 metric tons.

It was nevertheless dramatically reversed in 2025, when production fell to just 2,556 metric tons, a loss of more than 1,100 tons in a single year.

The fall, the GM said, was because between 65% and 70% of the palm trees on the estates are overaged, with some specimens now 40 years old and having grown too tall for efficient harvesting.

The 2025 collapse, he added, was aggravated by the failure of the company’s ageing steam boilers. He said neither of PAMOL’s two mills is connected to the national electricity grid and must generate their own power through steam boilers to run the processing machinery. 

GM Mbile explained that the first boiler began deteriorating in late 2024, due to failing internal tubes worn down by decades of use, while the second boiler had already been out of service for several years. 

With processing capacity crippled, revenue evaporated as the company loses between 700 million FCFA and 800 million FCFA per metric ton of fruits not processed.

He said while emergency repairs are being implemented, the company is continuing limited production, using the still-functional but compromised first boiler.

 Plans, the GM declared, are in place to acquire a decanter for the Lobe mill, which would improve oil extraction rates and incrementally boost revenue, even before the full recovery plan takes effect.

Plan for transformation of company

Beyond emergency repairs, the GM revealed that PAMOL has submitted a comprehensive 10-Year Strategic Master Plan to the Cameroonian government, which carries a price tag of 36 billion FCFA. He announced that it envisions the construction of a new 30-tons-per-hour oil mill at Lobe, full refurbishment of the existing Ndian mill, systematic replanting of overaged palm plants, rehabilitation of roads and bridges across the estates, and the construction of new staff housing alongside health and recreational facilities. 

The plan, he further disclosed, also prioritises the settlement of outstanding salary arrears and broader social support for workers. 

If realised, the GM said, the plan will raise annual palm oil production from the current approximately 6,000 metric tons to 36,000 metric tons, a six-fold increase creating around 2,000 new jobs.

A plantation in decline

PAMOL Plantations Plc operates approximately 11,000 hectares of oil palm estates in the South West Region, predominantly in Ndian Division. 

It runs two processing mills, both of which were commissioned in 1967, making them nearly six decades old, which, according to the GM, have received almost no major refurbishment throughout their operational lives!

The company once employed close to 3,000 workers, a figure that has collapsed to fewer than 1,000, because of the crisis in the North West and South West Regions, that has forced a dramatic scaling back of operations of the company. 

At its peak, it boasted a yield potential of between 15 and 18 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches per hectare. It now produces less than two tonnes per hectare, a fraction of their capacity. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3792 of Monday May 18, 2026