Salary increase: Biya keeps promise but...

Civil servants and people in uniform should be smiling, even if grudgingly after President Biya on Monday decreed a five percent salary increase to cushion the crushing impact of the rise in fuel prices. The increase which does not correspond to the jump in petrol and cooking gas prices is however seen in the proverbial logic that states that “half a loaf is better than none.”

The speed at which President Biya signed an ordinance to institute the wage increase in the civil service and military salaries underlines the sensitivity of the petrol hikes which was announced by the secretary general in the prime minister’s office, Louis Paul Motaze on June 30.

Given the multiplier effect of the fuel hikes that would eventually take up the prices of foodstuffs, transportation and even rents, the masses who do not earn salaries or are unemployed will bear the devastating burden. Even though the five percent is considered by some analysts as insignificant to workers, it is however a whooping amount on the wage bill. Finance minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey has explained that the decision will add some 30 billion francs on government’s annual expenditure.

Recognising that civil servants, estimated at about 200 000 are just about one percent of the population; other salutary measures have also been put in place to appease the business community especially the transport sector. Vehicle parking taxes have been reduced as much as by 50 percent for trucks, buses, taxi cabs and even bikes.

Transporters, hardest hit in the soaring fuel cost immediately announced strike action while some plying the Yaounde, Douala, North West and South West roads unilaterally raised fares. But when the government reminded the transport unions that eight days notice was required by law for any strike, intense negotiations between ministers and the union leaders hastily kicked-off. The unions and the state have one month to take a decision. But what is for now beyond uncertain is that transport fares will go up. By how much? That is what remains to be ironed out by the unions and government who are leaving no stone unturned to come to an amicable agreement that will prevent any strike action.

The havoc the February 2008 fuel fatal strike caused the nations is still sadly fresh in memory. The regime has deployed some seven ministers on the field to ensure there is no repeat of the 2008 riots which could disrupt public peace.

Such a strike could open the way for the dreaded Boko Haram terrorists to take advantage of it and inflict more harm in a society whose vast majority is hollow in the lowest depth of misery due to unemployment.

While civil servants may be jubilating over the announced five percent increase in salary, it must be pointed out that many of them are cheats. Most of them are ghost and absentee workers. It is an ill as The Guardian Post has had occasion to say before, that most of them must be kicked out of the civil service and the defaulters made to return their loot. After-all, isn’t it said that 'to whom more is given, more is expected?' The civil service owes Cameroonians a duty to serve them to the best of their abilities.

In raising the wage package of government workers and providing other fringe benefits for transporters, the government must be minded that the overwhelming majority of Cameroonians are small-scale farmers and traders who have no benefit from the government’s largesse. They are the ones to face the brunt especially in moving their crops from the farms to the urban markets. Their expectation from the negotiations would be for government to ensure that the increase in transport fares should be within the region of five percent.

If the rates go above that, farmers and traders will surely inflate their own prices and the twirling effect will take out any extra money the state wants to put in the pockets of the privileged citizens on its payroll.

Government must also see to it that the crowded police check points on the roads are brought down to the minimum. Cameroonians who shuttle daily on public transport will confirm that these control points are often used more to extort from transporters and passengers than to check high way crimes.

Inflation, as the minister of finance has rightly said, will go up by some two percent. That does not mean anything to the rich embezzlers with juicy government jobs. They are selfish and greedy. The government most ensure that the money earned from the rise in fuel prices is judiciously and transparently used and not embezzled or misappropriated.

The Guardian Post believes that Cameroon has found itself where it is today with such draconian measures because of the impunity of corruption, embezzlement and misappropriation. Cameroon is the fifth largest producer of oil in Africa, the sixth largest producer of cocoa in the world and a major timber producing country, not to talk of its tourism, other mineral and agricultural potentials.

But as President Biya has often said: “we have all” but why has the country in the first place slipped to the sorry position we are in today? President Biya asked the question whose answer is yet to be provided, but The Guardian Post insists that a sweeping people-oriented government long overdue should provide the answer. This, no doubt, would enable Cameroonians make good use of their resources; whether they are civil servants or in the informal sector of the economy.