Human rights participants call for more MP seats

The maiden edition of the National Human Rights Forum organised by the Cameroon Network of Human Rights Organisations in partnership with the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms ended in Yaounde on August 7, 2015 with a clarion call on government to increase the number of parliamentary seats in the National Assembly to be commensurate to the number of sub-divisions in the country.

The Human Rights activists say the present dispensation is not balance given that the population has increased tremendously over the years while the number of seats at the National Assembly is maintained at 180. One of the participants, FonNsoh from the North West Coordination of the Network, posited that some constituencies have 50,000 people while others have more than 100,000 inhabitants to cater for.

The Forum also recommended the scraping of the parliamentary micro grants to Members of Parliament and suggested that the money should be used to open up offices in each constituency. To the Human Rights activists, the Parliamentarians are law makers and should concentrate on checking government actions rather than be given State funds which are not accounted for.

The National Human Rights Forum also condemned the increasing human trafficking trends in the country and urged the government to ban trafficking of people and ensure the protection of children and minority groups. The gross abuse of human rights caused by the atrocities of the Boko Haram terrorist sect was also condemned.

The Coordinator of the Cameroon Human RightsNetwork, Hyomeni Paul Guy assured that the recommendations arrived at will be followed up and evaluation of its implementation will be done during the 2nd edition of the forum in 2016.