Anglophone teachers hold exam chief hostage over pay

A group of basic education teachers of the Anglo-Saxon sub-system in Yaounde held the chief of center for the First School Leaving Certificate, FSLC, examination at GBPS Biyem Assi, Yaounde, alongside five secretariat workers hostage for hours over what they described as pay discrimination.

The chief of center, a certain Hannah, and her five assistant officials as well as piles of answer scripts were all locked up for over 3hours, Wednesday June 10. According to the protesting teachers, their decision to lock up the officials came against the backdrop of a “paltry” allowance given them after invigilating the FSLC exams which ran through June 9 to June 10.

“Imagine that we are being given only 3000FCFA for two days of invigilation. Those who invigilated the Government Common Entrance exam which entails only Mathematics and English for one day went home with 3000 FCFA. We have been paying taxi fares to come here. If you deduct the transport fare, what are we left with? We cannot take 3000 FCFA after invigilating Mathematics Papers I & II, English Papers I & II, General Knowledge Papers I & II, ICT and conducting French language orals for two days!” The teachers said.

A female teacher, who elected anonymity, told our reporter that in previous years, the invigilation allowance ranged from 4000 FCFA to 5000 FCFA.

The teachers are upset by the fact that their Francophone colleagues who invigilated the Certificat d’Etude Primaire, CEP, were each paid 3500 FCFA. “This is gross and unacceptable marginalization,” they said

Ugly Drama

When the FSLC exams came to an end on Wednesday June 10, most of the teachers we accosted said they were expecting to have 6000 FCFA each or at least 5000 FCFA as invigilation allowance. However, and to their greatest dismay, the official from the Yaounde VI inspectorate of basic education, who was charged with disbursing the allowance, said it was 3000 FCFA per invigilator.

Disgruntled with the development, the furious teachers immediately locked up the chief of center and some secretariat workers who were packing the exam scripts for onward transmission to the marking center.

One of the teachers who was readily on the scene, Neba Nelson Anyangwe told The Cameroon Journal that initial attempts by some police elements to liberate the exam officials met with stiff resistance.

“It took only the DO for Yaounde VI, accompanied by a reinforced team of police and gendarmes elements, to break open the door by 8p.m.,” Anyangwe said.

It was only then, we gathered, that the exam officials were rescued and the scripts transported to the marking center at Ecole d’Appilcation du Lac.

Protesters Frustrate Marking Exercise

Having failed on Wednesday to get a better allowance package, the unpaid invigilators turned up Thursday at the marking center, grounded the marking exercise which was due to begin in the morning.

When our reporter visited the marking center by mid-day yesterday, (Thursday 11), the exercise was yet to kick off, and teachers invited for the marking were left idling at the marking center. We later learned that an official from the Mfoundi divisional delegation of basic education was dispatched to appease the furious teachers.

The official told the protesting teachers that the 3000 FCFA allowance was only part of the money – that the other part (amount undisclosed) is expected to be paid in one week time.

However, the official’s intervention seems not to have gone well with the teachers as they still refused to collect the 3000 FCFA.

Marking may only begin on Monday June 15, the president of the Center Region Basic Education Teachers Association, CEREBETA, Kingsly Tafri told The Journal on phone before we went to press.

Attempts to get reactions from the Yaounde VI inspector of basic education, Delphine Florence Mengu; in whose jurisdiction the crisis erupted, proved futile.

It is worth noting that similar protests were carried out in many other sub-centers across Yaounde except for a few like Essos where we gathered the invigilators accepted the 3000FCFA allowance.