Christopher Jator Njechu
6 October 2008
The newly-elected President of the Cameroon Union of Journalists, CUJ, Charly Ndi Chia, has said his executive is engaged in an onslaught to restore the dignity of Cameroonian journalists.
He made the assessment while visiting The Post and The Herald newsrooms in Yaounde, Tuesday, September 30. Ndi Chia also visited Mutations and other media organs in Yaounde where he had the opportunity to dialogue with many journalists.
Among the important issues Ndi Chia harped on was the plight of reporters who are duped by publishers.The CUJ President said reporters are made to go without salaries or are fed on what he called alms in the form of stipends, which often are insufficient given the current economic situation of the country.
The bane of it, he added, are publishers who accumulate excessive profits and swim in affluence at the expense of the well-being of their workers who would continue to toil even late into the night to fill pages of the newspapers.
To him, restoring the dignity of journalists means that publishers would have to insure their workers and neatly prepare for their (workers) retirement.It is this light that Ndi Chia called on all journalists to give him the support needed to push for these rights.
Accompanied by Martin Nkemngu, CUJ Vice President, Ndi Chia called on all journalists to prove their dignity, worth and respect of ethics of the profession.The visit was also an opportunity for the CUJ President to unveil his plans of action: the creation of regional branches in Cameroon's ten provinces and the establishment of a CUJ website that would help promote transparency and accountability in the running of the Union.
Another important worry was the question on why the CUJ stopped an elective general assembly of the Cameroon Media Council, CMC, which was going on at the Yaounde Mansel Hotel.
The supposed assembly was told that when the CUJ created the CMC in 2004, it did not give it the constitutional powers to convene a general assembly of journalists, and so the assembly in progress was not supposed to hold, The Post learnt.
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