Teachers in 4th day protest at PM’s office

A group of aggrieved primary school teachers from Douala protesting in the premises of the Prime Minister’s Office have vowed they’re not leaving until their grievances are addressed. They began the protest since Monday, May 11, but the Prime Minister seems to have ignored them – no one from his office has addressed them yet.

The teachers are protesting their exclusion from the recruitment/integration of Parent Teachers’ Association, PTA teachers, into the public service.

Last year government launched a recruitment exercise to convert some 9000 trained primary school teachers who are already teaching in government schools under the payroll of Parent Teachers’ Associations into contract teachers. Contract teachers in Cameroon are semi civil servants whose salaries and bonuses are paid by government.

Going by government guidelines, only teachers who were already teaching in government schools as PTA teachers were to be considered for the recruitment exercise. According to one candidate, documents compilation fee amounted to at least 30.000FCFA for each candidate. “What is hurting here is that the take home package for most of us did not amount to even 20.000FCFA.”

Few months into the 2014/2015 academic year, the Ministry of Basic Education published the first list of the retained candidates of the recruitment. However, just a fortnight ago, same authorities published another list and this second list didn’t retain most of the names in the first list.

“You’ll find names in this list that never featured in the initial list. Where are these names from? This is open corruption. We can’t condone this anymore,” one of the disgruntled teachers said.

Following the period spanning the publication of the initial list and now, the teachers have gone for at least five months without salaries and there is no guarantee that those whose names failed to feature in the second list would receive a franc from anybody.

The Director in charge of Basic Education in the Ministry of Basic Education, Joseph Njika told The Journal Tuesday, out rightly, that nobody asked the teachers to go and start teaching. “You don’t have to consider all they are saying as gospel truth. Nobody asked these teachers to go into the classroom and begin teaching under the cover of government.” he said.

Njika said the recruitment process was still ongoing: “Out of the 9000 teachers that had to be recruited within a period of three years, 3000 were to be recruited this year. We received about 25.000 files, so you didn’t expect us to play any magic to be able to recruit all the candidates.”

Reminded that the problem was not about the number of candidates who applied but about the selection exercise, Njika parried the blame on local authorities. “The study and selection

of files was not done by the ministry. It was done by local authorities; the Governors, SDOs, DOs, Delegates and Inspectors… so if there are any short comings, it should be at the level of the local authorities and not the ministry.” He said.

Some of the teachers who spoke to The Journal on grounds of anonymity for fear of victimization, said they suspect bribery and corruption in the recruitment exercise.

“Can you imagine that we have been teaching for four, five and six years with no salary with assurances that we would later be integrated, yet our names did not come out on that list? Instead, the list is stuffed with names of young graduates who just left Teachers’ Training Colleges.” One of the protesting teachers who gave her name 0nly as Marie argued.

The Journal gathered on the spot that the teachers had initially tabled their concerns to the Littoral Regional Delegate of Basic Education but he won’t proffer any solution. They then complained to the Littoral Governor but he advised them to complain directly to Yaounde authorities since the list was coming from there.

In the face of the taunting, on Monday May 11, the disgruntled teachers defied all odds and trooped to the PM’s office in black outfits stating that Basic Education Ministry failed to resolve their concerns.

The Journal gathered that when the teachers started their sit-down protest at the east entrance to the PM’s office, no official from the Star Building cared enough to find out what their grievances are. Only a piece of paper – audience form, was passed around Tuesday for them to sign.

In the meantime, security has been heightening around the PM’S office. At press time, the aggrieved teachers were still camped at the entrance of the PM’s office vowing “We shall spend the third night here until the Prime Minister tells us something.”