A team of inspectors from the Supreme State Audit Office has been investigating salaries, bonuses and allowances of workers of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, commonly known by its French acronym, CONAC, for almost a month.
The investigation was prompted by a unilateral decision by CONAC, the anti-corruption body to decide its staff’s salaries, considered to be very exorbitant after a proposal they had sent to the Presidency got no feedback.
The local media is describing the investigation as a war of supremacy between two anti-corruption agencies placed under the direct supervision of President Paul Biya. While CONAC claims to be the main anti-corruption watchdog, administrators at the state audit have equally argued that the decree creating their institution makes them overseers of the fight against corruption in the country.
According to Rev. Dieudonne Massi Gams, CONAC Chairman, who held a press conference yesterday June 26 to denounce what he called bad press, his personnel, he said, are going about their duties uninterrupted despite the presence of inspectors from the state audit office in CONAC’s library. He said members of the coordination committee of CONAC had met in 2010 and came up with some resolutions - he said, the resolutions were in accordance with a UN convention to which Cameroon is a party. The convention on the fight against corruption stipulated that employees in anti-corruption institutions should be treated and remunerated same as workers of United Nation’s agencies.
Massi Gams used the resolutions, specifically article R2 and R69 to defend the colossal sums he and his staff gets paid. He noted that though they did not get a reply from the presidency when they submitted the resolutions four years ago, they considered the presidency’s silence and non-objection as acceptance.
However, the team of inspectors dispatched by Henri Ayissi Eyebe, Minister Delegate at the Presidency in Charge of the Supreme State Audit Office, have a different opinion from that of CONAC administrators. They have stated that the silence of the presidency should not have been interpreted to mean acceptance.
Salaries of CONAC Chair, Permanent Secretary and members of the Coordination Committee range from between five and seven million FCFA per month. The Supreme State Audit Office holds that the text creating CONAC suggests that coordination committee
members shall be paid only bonuses for sessions they attend. The inspectors also object the payment of mission allowances to the coordination committee members which range between 200 and 100 thousand francs per day for local missions and 200 to 400 per day for missions abroad. However, Massi Gams has said the members of the commission are not even well paid, when compared to anti-corruption institutions in other African countries like Ghana.
Reports say the Supreme State Audi Office, in a bid to prove its superiority over other anti-corruption agencies in the country, has also requested authorisation from the presidency to investigate the financial situation of the National Agency for Financial Investigations, ANIF. The request is pending President Biya’s approval.
