Joe Dinga Pefok
2 June 2008
A rather abrupt communiqué dated May 27 and signed by co-liquidator, Emile Bekolo of Bekolo and Partners has put some 800 employees of the Cameroon Airlines, CAMAIR, in the streets.
The co-liquidator of the company in charge of financial affairs informed the workers that Friday May 30 was to be their last day working for the company.The workers were advised to remove their personal effects and hand over office keys before leaving their various offices or work sites on that May 30.
Also branches of CAMAIR at home and abroad were instructed by the same communiqué to end their activities on May 30.One of the leaders of the group of syndicates in the airlines sector, René Ekedi, described the decision to suddenly end the contract of CAMAIR workers as "brutal."
Ekedi, who retired from CAMAIR a few years back and who was the president of the workers' representatives for a number of years, noted that the CAMAIR employees were thrown into the streets without a franc of their dues having been paid.
It is worth noting that before the termination act, the workers had not been paid for four months.Bekolo, in his communiqué, promised that all workers' dues would be paid. The Post, however, learnt that the official representatives of the workers led by their president, Pierre Marie Essimi, accompanied by leaders of the other syndicates will travel to Yaounde today, June 2, to push for concrete arrangements with the authorities on the payment of the dues.
Following the sudden closure of CAMAIR, the American company, Ansett, is reportedly insisting to grab the company's lone aircraft for the debts CAMAIR owes it.
World Bank Imposed Liquidation
It would be recalled that government initially intended to privatise CAMAIR, but things later changed. On January 2006, it announced that bids were open for tenders to select a strategic partner to operate a new airline company that the state was to create to replace CAMAIR.
On February 22, 2006, the then Minister of the Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah, disclosed, while addressing members of GICAM in Douala, that government had, after concertating with the World Bank, decided to place CAMAIR on liquidation/privatisation.
This meant that part of the company would be liquidated and another part privatised. The Minister had also stated that government had adopted the policy to first of all restructure the company before privatising it, citing the case of CAMTEL where government invested heavily in 2005 and brought it back to good shape, as a successful experiment.
Then, either by coincidence or design, President Biya had the very next day (February 23, 2006), sacked Thomas Dakayi Kamga as CAMAIR General Manager and appointed a senior tax inspector, Paul Ngamo Hamani, as Provisional Administrator with a six month mandate, renewable.
Ngamo, who before his appointment was the President of the National Technical Commission for the Rehabilitation of Public Companies and Parastatals, was tasked to revamp the sinking CAMAIR, to prepare it for privatisation.
Worth noting is that the presidential text on the CAMAIR liquidation/privatisation which accompanied Ngamo's appointment stated that the company's employees were to be placed under the liquidation section, meaning that the new airlines to be created would have no obligation to take over any of them.
It was, however, stated that when the time comes and the workers part company with CAMAIR, individuals would be free to seek employment at the new airline company.
Failure To Match Practice With Theory
Ngamo failed to march his theoretical knowledge with practice and instead plunged CAMAIR into a state worse than he met it. Things got to a head when the lone plane owned by CAMAIR, the Dja (Boeing 767-300), was seized at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, on March 3, by an American company, Ansett, for debts owed them.
Finance Minister, Lazare Essimi Menye, had to plead with Ansett to accept an agreement for installmental payments before the Dja was released. Then in apparent intrigue, the government ordered that CAMAIR should suspend the Dja from international flights. But President Biya in a decree signed on March 11, fired Ngamo.
Then after the General Assembly meeting of CAMAIR on March 14 in Douala, the Minister of Finance told reporters that the mandate of Bekolo and Partners had been extended for one year as liquidator in charge of Financial Affairs at CAMAIR.
The Minister had disclosed that the liquidator was, among other things, to calculate the dues the workers would get when the company finally folds up. He also promised that a co-liquidator would be appointed to take care of judicial issues. But by May 30 when the workers were dumped, the said co-liquidator was yet to be appointed.
Poisoned Gift
An employee of CAMAIR, Adolphe Sammet Bell (former Controller General), was on March 19 given the 'honour' to serve as the manager of the company, by being appointed to the newly created post of Director Delegate in charge of Exploitation.
The Minister said he was to take care of the day-to-day running of the company, until the liquidation/privatisation time. During Sammet's installation, the Liquidator in charge of Financial Affairs, announced that the Director Delegate was to select a number of employees from the workforce of the company, to work with.
The rest were to be retrenched.The 59-year-old Bell, who was recruited by CAMAIR way back on June 5, 1978, saw his appointment as a dream come true. But little did he know that he had been handed a poisoned gift.
Meanwhile, many CAMAIR workers virtually resorted to worshipping the new Director Delegate in a bid to placate him to retain them in the company. On March 21, the Director Delegate announced that CAMAIR which had suspended flights since March 11 due to the temporary closure following the sacking of the Provisional Administrator, was to resume local flights that evening. But that was not to be.
CAMAIR was neck-deep in debts and its creditors who knew that liquidation was around the corner, mounted pressure on the company to clear their bills or at least part. The biggest pressure was said to have come from Ansett, as the government would not even respect the agreement the Minister of Finance had negotiated for instalment payment of the debt.
CAMAIR could not even afford fuel as the company was said to be owing over FCFA 2 billion for fuel and its major supplier, Total, which the company was reportedly owing over FCFA 1 billion, would not accept to lend CAMAIR more. Nevertheless, the Director Delegate had remained optimistic that CAMAIR planes were soon to resume local flights even if they had failed to resume on the date he had announced.
Sammet and the liquidator reportedly prepared a situation report and sent to the authorities in Yaounde, requesting that the government disburses at least FCFA 10 billion to enable CAMAIR to tackle some pressing debts and urgent needs. But in spite of repeated promises, nothing was forthcoming from the government.
The Director Delegate and the other employees idly waited for the money, while the situation of the company degenerated. The final blow came when the navigation certificate of the Dja was reportedly withdrawn by the International Civil Aeronautics Authority, considering that the plane had stayed grounded for over two months.
Government was now expected to cough out a few hundreds of millions for the Dja to go for mandatory maintenance in a bid to conform to the rules and regulations of the Aeronautics Authority.
But besides the difficulties in raising the money, government was also said to have been faced with the nightmare of the risk of the Dja being seized again by creditors, especially Ansett, if the plane travelled out of the country. In the face of all these difficulties and complications, government resolved to put an end to CAMAIR.
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