Robert Tumasang
29 September 2008
Bertoua — Retrenched workers of some defunct or restructured public enterprises in the East Province have promised the government hail and brimstone should their retrenchment dues not be paid within a fixed deadline.
The rather raucous crowd of some 200 ex-employees were speaking in Bertoua September 24 during a meeting convened by Mrs. Mebaya Justine, the East Vice President of the Confederation of Workers' Syndicate in Cameroon.They came in from all the four Divisions of the East Province and as far apart as the Northwest Province.
The meeting was intended to come up with an adequate response to a September 10, 2008, letter from the Minister of Finance re-assuring the ex-workers that "government is determined to take urgent measures to pay off the remaining dues of ex- employees of State enterprises."
The enterprises involved as per the East Province include ZAPI-EST, SOFIBEL, SCT, ONAREF, MIDIVIF, CENADEFOR and IRAD.In effect, thousands of people working for these enterprises lost their jobs when the State embarked on the Briton Woods imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes, SAPS, in the 1980s and '90s. As it were, they had to be paid their retrenchment benefits and other social dues.
In this light, the various stake holders met on June 26, 1991, under the auspices of the then Prime Minister, Simon Achidi Achu. The intention was to make an evaluation of the total amount of money the State would have to spend to pay off the retrenched workers. The result was a circa 12 million Euros (approximately FCFA 4.2 billion), being funding from the European Development Bank to the SAPS. That money was allocated for the payment of the social dues of those who lost their jobs because of the SAPS.
On August 15, 1991, the then Minister of Plan and Territorial Development, as a follow up to the meeting, wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, requesting a summary statement of agro-industrial enterprises affected by the reforms, and whose workers were likely to be beneficiaries of the package. That exchange ended only at ministerial level.
And so some groups of workers stepped up the demand for their money.Retrenched workers of the Zone d'Action Intergré de L'Est (ZAPI-EST), petitioned the Prime Minister on September 25, 1994, claiming unpaid dues amounting to FCFA 1,184 billion.
On July 18, 1996, Titus Edzoa, then Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, wrote back to the association of ex-employees of ZAPI-EST informing them that their file, which the presidency received earlier from the Prime Ministry, had been forwarded to the Finance Minister for proper action.
Again, that re-assurance turned out to be another delay tactic. The retrenched workers mounted even greater pressure and forced Ephraim Inoni, then Deputy Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, to write another letter to the workers on December of the same year reassuring them that "the Presidency of the Republic has reiterated ...to the head of the concerned ministerial department to set a time table for the gradual payment of the social dues."
Twelve years after, that presidential re-assurance still turned out to be a farce.On September 8, this year, another meeting bringing together the Minister of Finance, the retrenched workers and other stakeholders was held to determine the way forward. Instead of fixing a timeline for the payment of the dues, the Minister of Finance, Essimi Menye, decided to write a letter to the ex-workers, two days after the meeting, to say that the government is aware of their plight and will look into the problem.
That letter seemed to have touched a very sensitive nerve in the ex-workers and they therefore gathered in Bertoua on Sept 24 to come up with the best course of action.
In a strongly-worded memorandum to the Minister of Finance, the retrenched workers lashed out at the Minister to "spare us the notion of government's good intentions of which we are familiar, and simply tell us when our dues will be paid".
Me Mekok, one of the angry ex-workers, claimed that of the 400 of them who worked for ZAPI-EST, about 300 have already died."How many of them, Mr.Minister, do you still want to see dead before you finally decide to pay off their dues?" the memo questions.
The retrenched workers, many of them barely managing to walk, marched to the East Governor's office and handed him the memo, promising even more drastic action should the government give their request a blind eye, this time around.
They were, however, chased off the Governor's premises by the forces of law and order who claimed that the march was illegal.
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