Director beats up female staff

Director of the Regional Hospital Annex, Buea has reportedly beaten up a female staff.

The lady explained saying, “He wanted to ‘Take It’ by Force…” "…I don’t like the way you are behaving; you keep on behaving like a child. Since I came to the hospital, I have been raising you from one level to the other and you behave as if you don’t know what I am doing?" the man had complained.

“There was this day I helped him remove water that had flooded his house from 2pm to 5pm and when I was about leaving, he returned, met me and asked me to come sit by him on his bed and I told him my whole body was wet and that I needed to go home and change into something else. He wanted me in his bedroom where the wife sleeps, but I told him that it would have been better somewhere else.” she exclaimed.

These claims and more, made by Belinda Etombi Mbame against the Director of the Regional Hospital Annex, Buea are very strong. Unfortunately, they could not be verified by this Reporter, because Dr. George Enow Orock would rather not comment when contacted.

Ms. Mbame was at The Post on Friday, May 8, virtually ranting about what she said was a long time problem with the medic and which culminated on Thursday, May 7, with the doctor subjecting her to severe physical assault at the hospital premises. Asked if she fought back or she if she was just beaten, her reply was: “he beat me; I did not fight with him.”

According to Mbame, who identified herself as a revenue collector at the hospital, Orock’s grouse against her started sometime in March 5, 2014, when the Doctor met her at the Buea Regional Hospital as a worker at the emergency unit in charge of archives.

The Doctor had promoted and moved her to his secretariat and they had become such close friends to the extent that she was used to carrying out domestic chores at his residence. “I was cooking food for him to eat alongside his friends, since his wife is in Yaounde,” she claimed.

She said when the Doctor started indicating that he wanted to have carnal knowledge of her, after claiming that he had done her much good, she told him that she recognised all of that, but that, if anything was to happen between them, it wasn’t possibly going to be on his matrimonial bed or home.

Mbame recalled how on March 8, 2014, after the Women’s Day march past, she had a misunderstanding with, and was eventually slapped by another female staff.

“On the following Monday, the Director called for me, but when I got into his office, he asked me to wait outside. The Secretary came and told me ‘the Director says he doesn’t want you at the general secretariat; go down to the reception’.

Later on, I was called up again. In his office, the lady who slapped me, explained her own part of the story but he didn’t bother to get my own version. Rather he said, ‘Belinda, I will suspend you; in fact, I’m sacking you now. Do you have anything to say?’I remained quiet. He asked me to leave his office if I had nothing to say, and I left”.

Ms. Mbame claimed that some other Doctors tried talking him into seeing reason, adding that as a compromise, she was asked to write an apology letter to the Director, which she did.

“Afterwards, I was given a two months suspension letter with no salary. I saw it was not normal to suspend one for such a time without salary; it was an indirect way of sending me away.” On complaining, she added, the Director‘s response was… “That’s just it, take it like that.”

Mbame said, one week into the suspension, she complained to the Southwest Regional Delegate of Health, Dr. Victor Mbome Njie, who instructed her to return and tell Orock to place her somewhere else, probably, out of the hospital to avoid problems. The Director’s reaction was: “If your uncle likes you so much, he should take you up at the Delegation”.

“I then wrote to Mayor Patrick Ekema Esunge, who is the Chairman of the Hospital Management Board, explaining to him all that had transpired. Ekema in turn, wrote the Director, asking why he took a decision of such magnitude, without the consent of the Board. Whatever the Director told him, I don’t know because it was no longer my business.”

She told The Post that at the end of her suspension, the three (Director, Mayor and Delegate) sat, but that the Director insisted he did not want her at the hospital again.

Mbame said a rather baffled Mayor wondered if it was only the problem between her and the lady with whom she had had the misunderstanding that led to her being suspended.

“The Director had just insisted that he didn’t want me in the hospital and the Mayor asked that I address a letter to him (Mayor) explaining everything I deemed they should know, and that could be of help.” She said she wrote, quoting the two harassment incidents at his house and at the hospital. She handed The Post a copy of the said letter addressed to the Mayor.

Asked about what she termed the incident at the hospital, Mbame said: “I sat in the secretariat with Sarah Mejang, a colleague and he came, put his hand on my trouser over my pubis and said, ‘this place is too thick, who are those enjoying this thing that you don’t want to give it to me?’ “But I had overlooked the scene, and told him directly and immediately that I didn’t appreciate the act.”

She quoted the Director as saying: “Eh, go and sit down; you people keep pretending as if you are children. At this age, you keep pretending; you go and do things in the dark.”But she said she told him she knew what she wanted in life and would not want anybody intimidating her on what is hers, at this age.

The lady explained that, the Mayor again wrote to the Director, proposing a meeting, at which the letter she had written, explaining everything to the Mayor was read to the Director.

“Enow Orock was ‘mad’. He called me on telephone and said, ‘you have exposed me; you will never enter this hospital. From now onward, you will know that I’m your boss. You will see what will happen. ’She said it was decided and signed at the meeting that, she would be working at the Health Center in Molyko and collecting her pay at the hospital.

She detailed: “He has not given me a dime since January 2015. He has not paid me for the past four months. On Thursday, I went up to collect my yearly motivation. When I entered Mr. Martin Opiah’s office, the “Econome”, I saw my name on the voucher with FCFA 18,000.

I was surprised because previously, it fluctuates between FCFA 70,000 and FCFA 100,000, and I was the lowest on the list.” She said even if she had just FCFA 200 as daily motivation, it wouldn’t be that minimal.

“Opiah told me it was only the Director who could explain. I wanted to go and rectify the problem in his office. Probably; he overheard me at the “Econome’s” office. Just as I was about to make for his office, I only discovered as he fell on my body and started beating me up.

He removed his tie and coat, threw it and started beating me while screaming, ‘are there no security people around here? You people should throw her out… “It is too much.

He beat me with his hands, my body is paining and I don’t feel well. He keeps saying he has his brother at the Presidency; no one can do him anything. Has his brother sent him here to come and kill me?

Mbame told The Post that, when she called Orock’s Presidency brother’s Private Secretary and told him of what had happened, his reaction was, “that’s not what he has been sent to do there in Buea.”

Mbome swore that she never went to bed with his boss. “I would have slept with him, if his approach was polite and gentle. You cannot tell me to help you with some of your chores and at one point you want to harass me. You don’t do it that way. It is something that both parties have to agree, but he wanted to take it by force. In fact, I know this is the genesis of my problems with him”.

The mother of two complained that, she is in financial straits and can barely take care of her two kids, all caused by Dr. Orock.

“I have seen administrators, but have never seen this type in my whole life.”

Asked if she knew Orock’s wife and if Mrs. Orock was aware of the “cooking and other chores” which she hitherto was performing for her husband, Mbome replied in the affirmative.

“When the wife had a surgical operation, I cooked and took care of her at the hospital, but I don’t know why Enow Orock is treating me this way.” Asked how she came by the employment at the hospital she said it was Dr. Mbome who employed her.

“I got there first as a cleaner, after graduating from GTHS Molyko and then a Clerical school, and later on was promoted where it met my function… that is, documentation. I’m a permanent employee at the management committee. I have not had my salary for four months; Enow Orock has not paid me. I’m 39 years old. I have worked in that hospital for seven years”.

The Post laid hands on some useful memos. However, contacted by telephone to have him confirm or refute the claims made against his person, Dr. Orock simply snapped: “No comment” and switched off.